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John Joseph Lalor, Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States by the best American and European Authors, ed. John J. Lalor (New York: Maynard, Merrill, & Co., 1899). Vol 3 Oath - Zollverein
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Vol. III of a massive 3 volume, 3,000 page compendium of nearly every aspect of 19th century American economics and political institutions. An additional bonus are the numerous translation of articles written for the French-language Dictionnaire de l’économie politique published in 1852.

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UNITED STATES NOTES. Legal-Tender Cases—Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

UNITED STATES OF COLOMBIA.

UNITED STATES PENSION LAWS AND THE PENSION LAWS OF OTHER COUNTRIES

UNITED STATES SURPLUS MONEY

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE

UNIVERSITIES

USURY

UTAH

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WAGE FUND

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"WALTHAM SYSTEM,"

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WAR.

WAR, The Civil

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WAYS AND MEANS.

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WEBSTER, Daniel

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

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WHEELER

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WHISKY INSURRECTION

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WISCONSIN

WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

WRIGHT

WYOMING

WYOMING TERRITORY

X

X Y Z MISSION

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YAZOO FRAUDS

YEAS AND NAYS.

Z

ZEITGEIST.

ZOLLVEREIN.

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VOLUME III: Oath - Zollverein

O

OATH

OATH. Oaths have been in use in all countries of which we have any exact information, and it is probable that there is no nation which has any clear notion of a Supreme Being, or of superior beings, that does not make use of oaths on certain solemn occasions. An oath may be described generally as an appeal or address to a superior being, by which the person making it engages to declare the truth on the occasion on which he takes the oath, or by which he promises to do something hereafter. The person who imposes or receives the oath, imposes or receives it on the supposition that the person making it apprehends some evil consequences to himself from the superior being, if he should violate the oath. The person taking the oath may or may not fear such consequences, but the value of the oath in the eyes of him who receives or imposes it consists in the opinion which he has of its influence over the person who takes it. An oath may be taken voluntarily, or it may be imposed on a person under certain circumstances by a political superior; or it may be the only condition on which the assertion or declaration of a person shall be admitted as evidence of any fact.

—The form of taking the oath has varied greatly in different countries. Among the Greeks a person sometimes placed his hand on the altar of the deity by whom he swore; but the forms of oaths were almost as various as the occasions. Oaths were often used in judicial proceedings among the Greeks. The Dicastæ, who were judges and jurymen, gave their verdict upon oath. The Heliastic oath is stated at length in the speech of Demosthenes against Timocrates (c. 36). It does not appear that the oath was always imposed on witnesses in judicial proceedings; and yet it appears that sometimes witnesses gave their evidence on oath: perhaps the oath on the part of witnesses was generally voluntary. (Demosth., c. 16;, c. 10; and Meier and Schömann, Att. Process., p. 675.)

—In the Roman jurisprudence an oath was required in some cases from the plaintiff, or the defendant, or both. Thus the oath of calumny was required from the plaintiff, which was a solemn declaration that he did not prosecute his suit for any fraudulent or malicious purpose. The offense of false swearing was perjurium, perjury; but it was considered a less offense in a party to a suit when the oath was imposed by a judex than when it was voluntary. It does not appear that in civil proceedings witnesses were necessarily examined on oath; but witnesses appear to have been examined on oath in the judicia publica, which were criminal proceedings. The title in the Digest, "De Testibus" (22, tit. 5), makes no mention of the oath, though it speaks of punishment being inflicted on witnesses who bore false testimony.

—The law in America and England, as a rule, requires evidence or testimony for judicial purposes to be given on oath. A Jew, a Mohammedan and a Hindoo may be sworn as witnesses, but they must severally take the oath in that form which is sanctioned by the usage of their country or nation, and which they severally consider to be binding. The offense of declaring what is false when a witness is examined upon oath, constitutes perjury.

—Declarations made by a person under the apprehension of immediate death are generally admitted as evidence in judicial proceedings, when properly verified; for it is considered that the circumstances in which the person is placed at the time of making the declaration furnish as strong motives for veracity as the obligation of an oath. Quakers also, in all
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civil cases, were allowed by the statute 7 8 8 Wm. III., c. 34, to give their evidence on affirmation; and now the affirmation of Quakers and Moravians is admissible in all judicial proceedings, both civil and criminal.

—As oaths may be either voluntary or may be imposed by a political superior, so they may be imposed either on extrajudicial or on judicial occasions. Oaths which are imposed on occasion of judicial proceedings are the most frequent, and the occasions are the most important to the interests of society. The principle on which an oath is administered on judicial occasions is this it is supposed that an additional security is thereby acquired for the veracity of him who takes the oath. Bentham, in his "Rationale of Evidence," on the contrary, affirms that, "whether principle or experience be regarded, the oath will be found, in the hands of justice, an altogether useless instrument; in the hands of injustice, a deplorably serviceable one," "that it is inefficacious to all good purposes," and "that it is by no means inefficacious to bad ones."

—The three great sanctions or securities for veracity in a witness, or, to speak perhaps more correctly, the three great sanctions against mendacity in a witness, are, the punishment legally imposed on a person who is convicted of false swearing, the punishment inflicted by public opinion or the positive morality of society, and the fear of punishment from the Deity, in this world or the next, or in both. The common opinion is, that all the three sanctions operate on a witness, though they operate on different witnesses in very different degrees. A man who does not believe that the Deity will punish false swearing can only be under the influence of the first two sanctions; and if his character is such that it can not be made worse than it is, he may be under the influence of the first sanction only. Bentham affirms that the third sanction only appears to exercise an influence in any case, because it acts in conjunction with "the two real and efficient sanctions," "the political sanction and the moral or popular sanction;" and that if it is stripped of those accompaniments, its impotence will appear immediately.

—Bentham's chief argument is as follows. "that the supposition of the efficiency of an oath is absurd in principle. It ascribes to man a power over his Maker. It supposes the Almighty to stand engaged, no matter how, but absolutely engaged, to inflict on every individual by whom the ceremony, after having been performed, has been profaned, a punishment (no matter what) which, but for the ceremony and the profanation, he would not have inflicted. It supposes him thus prepared to inflict, at command, and at all times, a punishment, which, being at all times the same, at no time bears any proportion to the offense." Again: "either the ceremony causes punishment to be inflicted by the Deity in cases where otherwise it would not have been inflicted; or it does not. In the former case the same sort of authority is exercised by man over the Deity, as that which, in English law, is exercised over the judge by the legislator, or over the sheriff by the judge. In the latter case the ceremony is a mere form without any useful effect whatever."

—The absurdity of this argument hardly needs to be exposed. He who administers the oath, by virtue of the power which he has to administer it and the political superior who imposes the oath, may either believe or not believe that the Deity will punish false swearing, and it is quite immaterial to the question which of the two opinions they entertain. That which gives the oath a value in the eyes of him who administers it, or of that political superior who imposes it, is the opinion of the person who takes the oath; and if the individual who takes the oath believes that the Deity, in case it is profaned, will inflict a punishment which otherwise he would not inflict, the object of him who enforces the oath is accomplished, and an additional sanction against mendacity is secured. It matters not whether the Deity will punish or not, or whether he who enforces the oath believes that he will punish or not, if he who takes the oath believes that the Deity will punish false swearing, that is sufficient to show that the oath is of itself a sanction.

—The fear of legal punishment is admitted by Bentham to be a sanction against mendacity. But the legal punishment may or may not overtake the offender. Legal punishment may follow detection, but the perjury may not be detected, and therefore not punished. Is the oath, or would a declaration without oath be, "a mere form without any useful effect whatever," because the legal punishment may not, and frequently does not, overtake the offender? When a Greek or a Roman swore by his gods, in whose existence he believed, and who, being mere imaginations, could not punish him for his perjury, was not his belief in their existence and their power and willingness to punish perjury a sanction against mendacity? All antiquity at least thought so.

—There are occasions on which oaths are treated lightly, on which he who imposes the oath, he who takes it, and the community who are witnesses to it, treat the violation of it as a trivial matter. Such occasions as these furnish Bentham with arguments against the efficacy of oaths on all occasions. Suppose we admit, with Bentham, as we do merely for the sake of the argument, that "on some occasions oaths go with the English clergy for nothing;" and this, notwithstanding the fact, which nobody can doubt, "that among the English clergy believers are more abundant than unbelievers." The kind of oaths "which go for nothing" are not mentioned by Bentham, but they may be conjectured. Now, if all oaths went for nothing with the clergy, or with any other body of men, the dispute would be settled. But this is not the fact. If in any way it has become the positive morality of any body of men that a certain kind of oath should go for nothing, each individual of that body, with respect to that kind of oath, has the opinion of his body. He does not believe
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that such oath, if broken, will bring on him divine punishment, and therefore such oath is an idle ceremony. But if there is any oath the violation of which he thinks will bring on him divine punishment, his opinion as to that kind of oath is not at all affected by his opinion as to the other kind of oath. Now, oaths taken on judicial occasions are by the mass of mankind considered to be oaths the violation of which will bring some punishment some time, and therefore they have an influence on the great majority of those who take them. Whether society will in time so far improve as to render it safe to dispense with this ceremony in judicial proceedings, can not be affirmed or denied; but a legislator who knows what man now is, will require better reasons for the abolition of judicial oaths than Bentham has given.

—How far the requisition of an oath may be injurious in excluding testimony in certain cases, and how far oaths on solemn and important occasions may be made most efficacious, and in what cases it may be advisable to substitute declarations in lieu of oaths, are not matters of consideration here. It is enough here to show that an oath is a sanction or security to some extent, if the person who takes it fears divine punishment in case he should violate it; and that this, and no other, is the ground on which the oath is imposed.

—There is some difficulty in stating accurately how far oaths were required from witnesses in Roman procedure under the republic and the earlier emperors. In addition to what has been stated, the reader may refer to Cicero, Pro Q. Rose. Comœd., c. 15, etc.; and Noodt, Op. Omn., ii., 479, "De Testibus." By a constitution of Constantine, all witnesses were required to give their testimony on oath; and this was again declared by a constitution of Justinian. (Cod. 4, tit. 20, s. 9, 16, 19.)

—Many persons conscientiously object to the taking of an oath on religious grounds, and particularly with reference to the prohibition in Matthew v., 33. On the subject of oaths in general the reader may consult Grotius, De Jure, B. 8 P., lib. ii., c. 13; Paley's Moral Philosophy; Tyler's Origin and History of Oaths; the Law Magazine, vol. xii.; and the work of Bentham already referred to.1.

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BOHN

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE, The. (IN ENGLISH HISTORY). The natural history and antiquity of oaths in general were discussed some time ago by Mr E.B. Tylor. (Macmillan's Magazine, "ordeals and Oaths," May, 1876.) Mr. Tylor has, among other interesting points, made it all but certain that our formula, "So help me God!" is of Scandinavian or pre-Christian origin; a discovery which throws an unexpected light on the much abused dictum that Christianity is parcel of the common law of England, and the proposition, confidently advanced at a later time, that the oath of allegiance taken by members of parliament is in some way (notwithstanding the removal of Jewish disabilities) a bulwark of the Christian religion in England. This statement, however, errs only in generality and in being out of date. It is perfectly true that the oath of allegiance was, down to the Catholic emancipation, one of the chief statutory defenses of the Protestant religion, though in a political rather than a theological sense; and for many years later it contained a promise to maintain and support the Protestant succession to the crown as limited by the act of settlement. The history of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and of the various transformations they have undergone, is a varied and complex one.

—Before we go back to the beginning, it may be as well to look at the end. As late as 1868 the English oath of allegiance was reduced by the promissory oaths act to its present simple, not to say meagre, form, which stands thus: "I,—do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her majesty Queen Victoria, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God."

—What the substance of the oath as thus reduced may amount to would not be a very profitable question to discuss at large. It certainly does not promise anything beyond what is at common law the duty of every subject, and it seems to follow that it could not be broken except by some act which was otherwise an offense at common law, for example, treason or sedition, or perhaps also the vaguely defined offense of disparaging the dignity of the crown. And it seems at least a tenable view that the words "according to law" not only express the limit within which the crown is entitled to obedience, but cover the possibility (a possibility, fortunately, of the most remote kind) of the course of succession being legally varied.2 Such is the bare residue of the formidable and elaborate fabric of oaths and declarations raised up by parliaments of former generations against the pope and the pretender. We say against the pope and the pretender; for our modern oaths of allegiance are of statutory devising, and date from Henry VIII.'s assertion of the crown's ecclesiastical supremacy as against the see of Rome. The earliest point of history we have to observe is of a distinguishing kind, namely, that the modern oath of allegiance is a thing apart from the older oath of fealty, though formed on its analogy. Side by side with the fealty due from a man to his lord in respect to tenure, there was recognized in England, it would seem as early as the tenth century, an obligation of fealty to the crown as due from every free man without regard to tenure.3

—Sometimes we find mixed or transitional forms. Thus, there is preserved among the so-called statutes temporis incerti an oath taken by bishops, which, translated, is as follows: "I will be faithful and true, and faith and loyalty will bear to the king and to his heirs kings of England, of life and of member and of earthly honour, against all people who may live and die: and truly will acknowledge, and freely will do, the services which belong to the temporalty of the bishoprick of N., which I claim to hold of you, and which you render to me. So help me God and the Saints."4

—This bears considerable generic resemblance to the modern oath. But it is not simply an oath of allegiance in the modern sense: it includes an oath of fealty in respect of a specific tenure, namely, for the temporalities of the see holden of the crown. This is made more evident by comparison of the common forms of a free man's homage and fealty: "I become your man from this day forth, for life, for member and for worldly honour, and shall bear you faith for the lands that I claim to hold of you; saving the faith that I owe unto
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our lord the king * * I shall be to you faithful and true, and shall bear you faith of the tenements I claim to hold of you, and loyally will acknowledge and will do the services I owe you at the times assigned. So help me God and the Saints."

—Moreover, the ceremonies of homage and fealty have in no way been abrogated or superseded by any of the statutes imposing political oaths. In England an oath of homage is to this day taken by archbishops and bishops, in a somewhat fuller form than the old one above cited. An oath of fealty is stated in our law books of the thirteenth century to be required from every one attending the sheriff's tourn, and Coke speaks of it in Calvin's case, as if it had been still in use in his time.5 There appears no reason why this oath of fealty should not in theory still be due from every subject at common law, though it would be doubtful who had authority to administer it, and what would be the legal consequence, if any, of a refusal to take it.

—Shortness of time and space, however, forbid the further discussion of the doctrine or history of allegiance at common law. We must pass on to the additional obligations imposed by a series of statutes, from which the oath of allegiance in its existing form and application is lineally derived.

—In the spring of 1534, when the last hopes of a reconciliation with Rome were exhausted, there was passed "An act for the establishment of the king's succession," (25 H. VIII., c. 22), the objects of which were to declare valid the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn, and to limit the succession of the crown to his issue by her. It also enacted that all subjects of full age should make a corporal oath that they would "truly, firmly and constantly, without fraud or guile, observe, fulfill, maintain, defend and keep to their cunning wit and uttermost of their powers, the whole effect and contents of this present act." The oath was not further specified in the act itself, but a form was at once prepared and used, and was expressly authorized by statute in the next session. (26 H. VIII., c. 2.) This, as the earliest specimen of its kind, deserves the honor of being given in full, with the original spelling: "Ye shall swere to beare faith, truth and obedyence alonely to the Kynges Majestye and to his heires of his body of his moost dere and entirely belovyd laufull wyfe Quene Anne, begotten or to be begotten. And further to the heires of oure said Soveraign Lorde accordyng to the lymytacion in the Statute made for suretie of his succession in the crowne of this Realme mencioned and conteyned, and not to any other within this Realme nor foreyn auctorite or Potentate; And in case any othe be made or hathe be made by you to any persone or persones, that then ye do repute the same as vayne and adnyehillate; And that to your connynge wytte and utter moste of your power, without gyle, fraude or other undue meane, you shall observe, kepe, mayntene 8 defende the saide acte of successyon, and all the hole effectes 8 contentes therof, and all other actes and statutes made yn confirmacion or for execucion of the same or of any thynge therin conteyned; and this ye shall do ayenst all maner of persones of what estate, dignyte, degree or condicion so ever they be; And in no wyse do or attempte, nor to your power suffre to be done or attemptid, directly or indirectly, any thinge or thinges prively or appartlye to the lette, hindrannce, damage or derogacion therof or of any parte of the same by any maner of meaner or for any maner of pretence; So helpe you God, all Sayntes and the Holye Evangelystes."

—Within two years the calamitous end of the marriage with Anne Boleyn brought about a new "Act for the establishment of the succession of the imperial crown of this realm," (28 H. VIII., c. 7), which, after repealing the former acts and making minute provision for the descent of the crown, appointed a new oath of allegiance, and declared that refusal to take it should be deemed and adjudged high treason. There is no variation worth noticing in the form of the words, save that Queen Jane is substituted for Queen Anne. In the same session (c. 10) there followed an "Act extinguishing the authority of the bishop of Rome," which introduced a special oath of abjuration. The preamble is a notable specimen of the inflated parliamentary style of the time. It sets forth how "the pretended power and usurped authority of the bishop of Rome, by some called the pope, * * did obfuscate and wrest God's holy word and testament a long season from the spiritual and true meaning thereof to his worldly and carnal affections, as pomp, glory, avarice, ambition and tyranny, covering and shadowing the same with his human and politic devices, traditions and inventions, set forth to promote and stablish his only dominion, both upon the souls and also the bodies and goods of all Christian people": how the pope not only robbed the king's majesty of his due rights and pre-eminence, "but spoiled this his realm yearly of innumerable treasure"; and how the king and the estates of the realm, "being overwearied and fatigated with the experience of the infinite abominations and mischiefs preceding of his impostures," were forced of necessity to provide new remedies. The oath of abjuration was to be taken by all officers, ecclesiastical and temporal, and contained an undertaking to "utterly renounce, refuse, relinquish or forsake the bishop of Rome and his authority, power and jurisdiction."

—In 1544, however, it had been discovered that in these oaths of allegiance and supremacy, though they
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seem to a modern reader pretty stringent and comprehensive, "there lacketh full and sufficient words"; and in the act further regulating the succession to the crown (35 H. VIII., c. 1) occasion was taken to provide a new consolidated form to replace the two previously appointed oaths. This is very full and elaborate; some of its language survived down to our own times, as will be seen by the following extract: "I, A B, having now the veil of darkness of the usurped power, authority and jurisdiction of the see and bishop of Rome clearly taken away from mine eyes, do utterly testify and declare in my conscience that neither the see nor the bishop of Rome nor any foreign potentate hath, nor ought to have, any jurisdiction, power or authority within this realm, neither by God's law nor by any other just law or means, * * and that I shall never consent nor agree that the foresaid see or bishop of Rome, or any of their successors, shall practice, exercise or have any manner of authority, jurisdiction or power within this realm or any other the king's realms or dominions, nor any foreign potentate, of what estate, degree or condition soever he be, but that I shall resist the same at all times to the uttermost of my power, and that I shall bear faith, truth and true allegiance to the king's majesty and to his heirs and successors, * * and that I shall accept, repute and take the king's majesty, his heirs and successors, when they or any of them shall enjoy his place, to be the only supreme head in earth under God of the church of England and Ireland, and of all other his highness dominions * *."

—Refusal to take the oath is, as before, to subject the recusant to the penalties of high treason. Apparently this act remained in force till Mary's accession, in 1553. One of the first proceedings of her reign was to abolish all statutory treasons not within the statute of Edward III, by which the offense of high treason was and still is defined. (1 Mar., st. 1, c. 1.) Thus, the penalty for not taking the oath of allegiance and supremacy was abrogated, and the oath of course became a dead letter, though not dealt with in express terms. Nor was it revived in the same form when the reformation again got the upper hand with the accession of Elizabeth. The first act of parliament of her reign 6 —which, in repealing the reactionary legislation of Philip and Mary, names "Queen Mary, your highness' sister," with a significant absence of honorable additions—created a new and much more concise oath of supremacy and allegiance, to be made by all ecclesiastical officers and ministers, and all temporal officers of the crown, and also by all persons taking orders or university degrees. It is short enough to be cited in full: "I, A B, do utterly testify and declare in my conscience that the queen's highness is the only supreme governor of this realm and of all other her highness' dominions and countries, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal, and that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm, and therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities and authorities, and do promise that from henceforth I shall bear faith and true allegiance to the queen's highness, her heirs and lawful successors, and to my power shall assist and defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences, privileges and authorities granted or belonging to the queen's highness, her heirs and successors, or united or annexed to the imperial crown of this realm. So help me God and by [sic] the contents of this Book."

—The oath was not imposed on all subjects, and the only penalty for refusing it was forfeiture of the office in respect of which it ought to be taken. So far this presents a very favorable contrast to the violent legislation of Henry VIII. Under the act of Elizabeth the sanction is the mildest one compatible with the law being effectual; indeed, it is not properly a penalty, but a condition. The law no longer says to all sorts of men, "You must take this oath or be punished as a traitor," but only to men receiving office or promotion, "You must take this oath to qualify yourself for holding the place." But troubles were not long in gathering, and they bore their natural fruit in a return to disused severities. A new and more stringent anti-papal act was passed in 1563 (5 Eliz., c. 1), and it seems that even sharper measures had been first proposed. The obligation to take the oath of supremacy was extended to all persons taking orders and degrees, schoolmasters, barristers, attorneys, and officers of all courts. A first refusal to take the oath was to entail the penalties of premunire; a second, those of high treason. Temporal peers were specially exempted, "forasmuch as the queen's majesty is otherwise sufficiently assured of the faith and loyalty of the temporal lords of her highness' court of parliament." So matters stood till, early in the reign of James I., yet a new outbreak of indignation and panic was produced by the gunpowder plot. The Protestant majority was convinced by "that more than barbarous and horrible attempt to have blownen up with gunpowder the king, queen, prince, lords and commons, in the house of parliament assembled, tending to the utter subversion of the whole state," that popish recusants and occasionally conforming papists should be more sharply looked after. Hence the "Act for the better discovering and repressing of popish recusants" (3 Jas. I., c. 4), which established, among other precautions, a wordy oath of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration, which might be tendered by justices of assize or of the peace to any commoner above the age of eighteen; persons refusing it were to incur the penalties of premunire. This oath contains an explicit denial of the pope's authority to depose
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the king or discharge subjects of their allegiance, a promise to bear allegiance to the crown notwithstanding any papal sentence of excommunication or deprivation, and a disclaimer of all equivocation or mental evasion or reservation. About the middle of it occurs for the first time the "damnable doctrine and position" clause, as we may call it, which was long afterward continued in the interests of the Protestant succession against James II. and the pretender. The words are these: "And I do further swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest and abjure, as impious and heretical, this damnable doctrine and position, that princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the pope may be deposed or murdered by their subjects or any other whosoever." Here also we find the words, afterward discussed in relation to the admission of Jews to parliament, "upon the true faith of a Christian." They can not have been particularly intended to exclude Jews from office, as Jews were at that time excluded from the realm altogether. It has been plausibly conjectured that their real intention was to clinch the proviso against mental reservation or equivocation "by conclusively fixing a sense to that oath which by no evasion or mental reservation should be got rid of without (even in the opinion of the Jesuit doctors themselves) incurring the penalty of mortal sin." For in a certain treatise on Equivocation, of which a copy corrected in Garnet's handwriting was found in the chamber of Francis Tresham, one of the conspirators named in the act, and was much used on the trial, this point of mental reservation is fully discussed; and it is laid down that equivocation and reservation may be used without danger to the soul even if they are expressly disclaimed in the form of the oath itself. But there is this exception, that "no person is allowed to equivocate or mentally reserve, without danger, if he does so, of incurring mortal sin, where his doing so brings apparently his true faith toward God into doubt or dispute." It was probably conceived by the advisers of the crown that the words, "upon the true faith of a Christian," brought the statutory form of oath within this exception. (Judgment of Baron Alderson in Miller vs. Salomons, 7 Ex. 536, 537.) A few years later, in the session of 1610, a sort of confirming act was passed (7 James I., c. 6), which made minute provision as to the places where, and the officers by whom, the oath should be administered to various classes of persons.

—Shortly after the restoration an oath declaring it unlawful upon any pretense whatever to take arms against the king, was imposed on all soldiers and persons holding military offices (14 Car. II., c. 3, as, 17, 18): and the act of uniformity (14 Car. II., c. 4, s. 6) contained a declaration to the like effect, and also against the solemn league and covenant. A similar provision in the corporation act was overlooked at the revolution, and escaped repeal till the reign of George I. In 1672 a revival of the anti-Catholic agitation followed upon Charles II.'s attempts to dispense with the existing statutes, nominally in favor of Romanists and Dissenters equally by a declaration of liberty of conscience. The result was, that a declaration against transubstantiation was added to the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, by a new penal statute entitled "An act for preventing dangers which may happen from popish recusants," (25 Car. II., c. 2). After the revolution of 1688, however, a new start was taken. By the combined effect of two of the earliest acts of the convention parliament (1 Will. 8 Mar., c. 1 and c. 8), all the previous forms of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, expressly including the declaration as to taking arms against the king, were abrogated, and a concise form substituted, which stood as follows: "I, A B, do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties King William and Queen Mary. So help me God, etc.7 I, A B, do swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest and abjure, as impious and heretical, that damnable doctrine and position that princes excommunicated or deposed by the pope or any authority of the see of Rome may be deposed or murthered by their subjects or any other whatsoever. And I do declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, states or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm. So help me God, etc."

—In 1701 came the death of James II. at St. Germains, and the ostentatious recognition of the pretender as king of England by Louis XIV. Fuller and more stringent precautions were again thought needful, and in the very last days of William III.'s life an act was passed (13 8 14 Wm. III., c. 6), imposing on specified classes of persons, including peers, members of the house of commons, and all holding office under the crown, an oath of special and particular abjuration of the pretender's title. The declaration of 1672 against transubstantiation (which had been spared from the general abrogation of other existing tests at the beginning of the reign) was at the same time expressly continued. As the form settled by this act remained substantially unchanged down to our own time, it is here set out: "I, A B, do truly and sincerely acknowledge, profess, testify and declare in my conscience before God and the world, that our sovereign lord King William is lawful and rightful king of this realm and of all other his majesty's dominions and countries thereunto belonging. And I do solemnly and sincerely declare that I do believe in my conscience that the person pretended to be the prince of Wales during the life of the late King James and since his decease pretending to be and taking upon himself the stile and title of king of England by the name of James the Third, hath not any right or title whatsoever to the crown of this realm or any other the dominions thereto
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belonging. And I do renounce, refuse and abjure any allegiance or obedience to him. And I do swear that I will bear faith and true allegiance to his majesty King William, and him will defend to the utmost of my power against all traitorous conspiracies and attempts whatsoever which shall be made against his person, crown or dignity. And I will do my best endeavours to disclose and make known to his majesty and his successors all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which I shall know to be against him or any of them. And I do faithfully promise to the utmost of my power to support, maintain and defend the limitation and succession of the crown against him the said James and all other persons whatsoever as the same is and stands limited (by an act instituted an act declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the crown) to his majesty during his majesty's life, and, after his majesty's decease, to the Princess Ann of Denmark and the heirs of her body being Protestants, and for default of issue of the said princess and of his majesty respectively, to the Princess Sophia, electoress and duchess dowager of Hanover, and the heirs of her body being Protestants. And all these things I do plainly and sincerely acknowledge and swear according to these express words by me spoken, and according to the plain and common sense understanding of the same words, without any equivocation, mental evasion or secret reservation whatsoever. And I do make this recognition, acknowledgment, abjuration, renunciation and promise, heartily, willingly and truly, upon the true faith of a Christian. So help me God."

—This oath was in addition to the oaths of allegiance and supremacy prescribed by the acts already mentioned of the first session of William and Mary's reign, not by way of substitution for them. It will be observed that the words "upon the true faith of a Christian" now reappear. In Queen Anne's reign the only alterations made were, first to put Anne's name for William's, and then to leave a blank to be filled in with the name of the sovereign for the time being.8 The accession of George I., in 1714, gave occasion for a full re-enactment of the oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration, in what would now be called a consolidating act. (1 Geo. I., st. 2, c. 13.) All persons holding civil or military office, members of foundations at the universities, schoolmasters, "preachers and teachers of separate congregations," and legal practitioners, were required to take the oaths; besides which, they might be tendered by two justices of the peace to any one suspected of disaffection. Members of both houses of parliament are, as before, specially forbidden to vote without taking the oaths. The form was settled by inserting the name of George in the blank left by the last statute of Anne, but no provision was made in terms for substituting from time to time the name of the reigning sovereign. In 1766, upon the pretender's death, the oath of abjuration was made appropriate to the new state of things by inserting the words "not any of the descendants of the person who pretended to be the prince of Wales," etc.

—In this form the oaths remained for nearly a century, affected only by a certain number of special exemptions. The most important of these was made by the Catholic emancipation of 1829. The act which effected this (10 Geo. IV., c. 7) allowed Roman Catholics to sit in parliament, taking, instead of the oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration, a single modified oath containing the substance of them expressed in a milder form. The Catholic member was required, instead of detesting and abhorring the "damnable doctrine and position," to "renounce, reject and abjure the opinion" that excommunicated princes might be deposed or murdered; and to disclaim the belief that the pope of Rome or any other foreign prince had or ought to have any temporal or civil jurisdiction, etc., within this realm. The words "upon the true faith of a Christian" were for some reason omitted, and the oath concluded thus; "And I do solemnly, in the presence of God, profess, testify and declare, that I do make this declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the words of this oath, without any evasion, equivocation or mental reservation whatsoever." This act contains, for the first time, a standing direction to substitute in the form of the oath, as may be required, the name of the sovereign for the time being.

—All this time the penalties of the statute of 1714 against a member of parliament who voted without having taking the oaths (or, in the case of a Catholic, the special oath provided by the Catholic relief act), continued in force, and very alarming they were. In addition to the pecuniary forfeiture of £500, they included disability to sue in any court, to take a legacy, to hold any office, and to vote at parliamentary elections. Disability to be an executor, which is also in the list, would at this day be regarded by many persons as rather a benefit than otherwise.

—The next step was in consequence of the persistent endeavors made through several years to procure the removal of Jewish disabilities. It would be too long to trace the history of this movement through its various stages; and the episode of Mr. Salomons' gallant attempt to take the position by a coup de main has now lost its interest for most people except lawyers who have a taste for ingenious argument on the construction and effect of statutes.9 In 1857 Mr. Salomons, being duly elected for Greenwich, took the oath on the Old Testament, omitting the words "upon the true
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faith of a Christian"; he was sued for the statutory penalty, as having sat without taking the oath; and it was decided (with one dissenting voice, but a weighty one)10 that these words were a material part of the oath, and could not be dispensed with otherwise than by legislation. At last, in 1858, a very odd and peculiarly English compromise was arrived at after the house of lords had rejected bills sent up from the commons. By one act (21 8 22 Viet., c. 48) a simplified form of oath, but still containing the words "upon the true faith of a Christian," was substituted for the oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration in all cases where they were required to be taken. The application of this enactment to clerical subscriptions was afterward more especially regulated by the clerical subscription act, 1865 (28 8 29 Vict., c. 122).11 Then, by a separate act (21 8 22 Vict., c. 49), either house of parliament was empowered to permit by resolution "a person professing the Jewish religion, otherwise entitled to sit and vote in such house," to take the oath, with the omission of the words, "and I make this declaration upon the true faith of a Christian." It was also provided, that in all other cases where the oath of allegiance was required to be taken by a Jew, these words might be omitted. Such an exemption had once already been given by parliament in the eighteenth century, but, after the fashion of legislation in those days, only on a special occasion and for a limited purpose; and more recently to enable Jews to hold municipal offices. The act of 1858, being general in its terms, is a full statutory recognition of the civil equality of Jews with other British subjects, which, though long allowed in practice, had never yet been expressly declared.

—At length, in 1866, we come out into the daylight of modern systematic legislation. The parliamentary oaths act of that year (29 Viet., c. 19) swept away the former legislation relating to the oaths of members of parliament, and prescribed the following shortened form: "I, A B, do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her majesty Queen Victoria; and I do faithfully promise to maintain and support the succession to the crown, as the same stands limited and settled by virtue of the act passed in the reign of King William the Third, instituted 'An act for the further limitation12 of the crown, and better securing the rights and liberties of the subject,' and of the subsequent acts of union with Scotland and Ireland. So help me God."

—For not taking the oaths only the pecuniary penalty of £500 was retained out of the terrible list enacted by earlier statutes. This act was excellent as far as it went, but it applied only to members of parliament. It is the fate of English legislation to be carried on as best it can, piecemeal, and at odd times. Measures which excite opposition pass through a struggle in which they are lucky if they escape without maim or grave disfigurement. As to those which do not excite opposition, it is for that very reason of no apparent political importance to push them on, and, as it is worth nobody's while to be much interested in them, they have to take their chance. In this case an act of the following year (the office and oath act, 1867, 30 8 31 Vict., c. 75) authorized the new parliamentary form of oath to be taken in all cases where the oath of allegiance was required as a qualification for office. Finally, the promissory oaths act of 1868 (31 8 32 Vict., c. 72) cut down the oath of allegiance in all cases to the form already given at the beginning of this paper, and substituted a declaration for an oath in the great majority of cases where an oath was formerly required. Still the work of simplification was not formally complete. A repealing act was passed in 1871 (34 8 35 Vict., c. 48), which struck off the statute book a long list of enactments imposing oaths for various purposes on various persons, and others partially amending or repealing them, from the middle of the fourteenth century downward. And so the story ends for the present; England no longer stands in fear of pope or pretender, and the modern oath of allegiance, devised for the protection of the realm against foemen and conspirators, and swollen with strange imprecations and scoldings, is brought back to the more plain and seemly fashion of the ancient oath of fealty. Yet our English ancestors were not capricious in the elaborate safeguards which they built up again and again round a ceremony originally of the simplest. Every clause and almost every word in the statutory oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration was directed against a distinct and specific political danger. It is unhappily true that examples of repressive legislation against mere speculative opinions, though less common in England than elsewhere, are by no means wanting. But the political test oaths do not belong to this class. They were framed to discover and bring to punishment, or to disable and exclude from privileges, not the holders of theological opinions as such, but persons holding opinions, of which, rightly or wrongly, disloyal and seditious behavior was supposed to be the necessary or highly probable result. The attempt lately made, and for the present made with success, to use the parliamentary oath as a religious test, and thereby exclude a person obnoxious to a majority of the house of commons, partly for theological but much more for political and social reasons, has nothing to justify it in English history, or in the traditions of English politics. It is an unhappy example of the ignorance and confusion of mind concerning the institutions of their own country which are still too common among
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English legislators. (See ALLEGIANCE, and the note to the preceding article.)

FREDERICK POLLOCK.

OCCUPATION

OCCUPATION. I. Of the different meanings of this word, that which has the longest exercised the ingenuity of publicists relates to the manner of acquiring lands which up to the time of acquisition had no owner. The occupation of such lands, that is, the taking of effective possession of them, is one of the means of obtaining the right of property in them. The individual who discovers an uninhabited island, which constitutes no part of an established state, may appropriate it, cultivate it and dispose of it, and the more labor he expends upon it the less contestable is his title thereto. If the island forms part of a state, he can not acquire the ownership of it, unless the laws recognize the rights of the first occupant, or he can acquire these rights only on the conditions provided by the laws of the country. Thus, in the United States, the land which belongs to no one in particular forms part of the domain of the Union; it is not, strictly speaking, without an owner; and hence the first occupant has only a limited right, the right of pre-emption of such land. But to proceed with the hypothesis of a desert island. A European, let us suppose, discovers such an island in the Pacific ocean, and takes effective possession of it. It does not suffice for this purpose to erect a post, and nail a board to it, with a notice of the taking of possession, and do nothing further; the occupation and exploitation of the land are absolutely necessary. Our European is assuredly the proprietor of this island by private title, or from the standpoint of the civil law, but is he also its political lord? He can only be so in one case; if he has previously freed himself from the bonds which attach him to his own country. As long as he remains a Frenchman, a German or an Englishman, his status follows him, his country retains its rights over him, he nationalizes or naturalizes the objects which become his property, for, in many respects, property, at least movable property, is an accessory of the man. The power of a citizen, however, to cause an accession of land in favor of his country is not unlimited, for the power of his country is not unlimited. Just as his personal status follows him wherever he goes, while his real status (immovable property) necessarily remains subject to the territorial laws of his country; so his right of extending the boundaries of the nation to which he belongs may be contested. In other words, the right of an individual to take possession of land in the name of his government may be questioned. The law on this point is not well settled, for the reason that the facts in cases of this kind have not greatly varied. An individual might live on an island, lost in the ocean, and enjoy sovereignty, because no one cares to disturb him. He might also feel the need of protection, and ask it of his native country; but the latter is the judge of what he may with propriety do. It can grant or refuse its protection. It will never grant that an individual can bind it without a commission to do so, and it is free not to ratify the taking of possession; but if it wishes to accord its protection, if it consents to cover with its flag the domain which has come to it by accession, it must do so by a formal or express act; it is for the government to take possession. The official occupation of land without an owner, by the agents of a government, constitutes a mode of acquisition fully recognized by international law. This mode of acquisition has been used and abused, but in proportion as the earth becomes peopled, there is less occasion to have recourse to it.

—II. Up to this point there has only been in question the occupation of a territory without an owner, but there is also such a thing as the occupation of an inhabited country. A victorious army, which invades a country, occupies it in part or in whole, and sometimes during a long period. We shall not stop to discuss an occupation which lasts days or weeks, and the near end of which may be foreseen. The invader should be humane, should demand only those things which he needs for his support, and should destroy nothing, except to defend himself or as an act of war. He should not destroy simply for the sake of destruction. If the occupation is a lengthy one, matters become complicated, and a great number of questions arise. In such case evidently the power which occupies a country has become its master; it exercises there the rights of sovereignty, levies taxes, makes the necessary laws, and, if need be, administers justice; but it possesses only sovereignty de facto, and not sovereignty de jure. Thus, the inhabitants do not lose their nationality, the civil relations between the citizens of the country occupied remain intact, and the laws continue in force, save those which the conqueror has expressly repealed, modified or suspended. A crime committed during the occupation is punishable by the tribunals of the country, even after the conclusion of peace. An alien, even if he belongs to the nationality of the conqueror, but is not a part of the army, remains subject to the laws of the invaded country, and he may, if the statutes of limitation do not prevent it, be arrested after the declaration of peace, for the crimes he may have committed at a time when the courts perhaps were not in a condition strictly to enforce the law.

—Unless the commander of the invading army decides to the contrary, the administrative authorities may remain at their posts, and maintain their governmental order. The courts may continue to administer justice, and it is even their duty to do so as long as there are no serious moral or material obstacles in the way. They administer justice in the name of their sovereign. In the Franco-German war a very peculiar difficulty arose. During the war, the revolution of the 4th of September having changed the form of the French government, and the Germans not having yet recognized the republic, they thought that they could not permit justice to be administered in their presence, in the name of the republic,
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without seeming to recognize it; they therefore requested that the court of Nancy and several other courts should sit in the name of the "occupying governments," which these courts rightly refused to do. The Germans were doubly mistaken: first, in asking that justice should be administered in their name; and secondly, in supposing that the administration of justice in the name of the republic implied on their part a recognition of its government. They were supposed, or might have been supposed, to ignore the proceedings of the courts, as long as the magistrates had nothing to do with the war, and their judgments and decrees affected only private interests.

—III. We have again the occupation of a country by way of pledge, as for instance, for the payment of a war indemnity. In cases of this kind the details of the mode of occupation are generally regulated by treaty. However, as a state of peace has here succeeded that of war, all public services are resumed and directed by the national government, and the commander of the army of occupation has no power but such as is necessary for the security of his troops. He can not levy taxes, nor demand any contributions except those stipulated for in the treaty; but if the local authorities are unable to preserve his safety, he has the right to protect himself. The inhabitants of the occupied country should have the patriotism to avoid giving him any serious ground of complaint. A calm dignity is always more noble than daring but ill-judged annoyance. Occupation may also be a mode of coercion, of compelling the fulfillment of a contract. For example, if one of the German countries did not submit to some one of the provisions of the federal constitution, the emperor might send troops of occupation into such country, which would act as a sort of bailiff at the expense of the country occupied. But the state of peace would not necessarily be interrupted, and the civil authorities would continue to discharge their functions as usual. These two kinds of occupation may be considered as legal measures, but history has also recorded, and much too frequently, occupations more or less well (we should say illy) justified by policy. These occupations being made outside of the provisions of international law, publicists can scarcely think of laying down rules for them.

MAURICE BLOCK.

OCEANICA

OCEANICA. Under this head, although contrary to the custom of geographers, we propose to treat of both Oceanica and Australia.

—I. OCEANICA. By the name Oceanica are designated all the islands scattered in the Pacific ocean, from the coasts of Asia and the, Indian ocean to the coasts of America. The most northerly of the islands belonging to Oceanica is the rock of Crespa, latitude 32° 46' north; the most southerly are the islands of Bishop and his Clerk, latitude 55° 15' south; the most westerly point is the island of Boh, longitude 129° 12' east; while the rock of Salary Gomez, longitude 254° 40' east of Greenwich, forms the eastern boundary. The islands are divided into high and low. The former are, in almost every case, of volcanic origin and mountainous; they are the largest and most important in all the groups, and have a fertile soil; the low islands, on the contrary, are mostly but ring-like rocks of coral rag, encircling a body of water. The waves of the ocean often carry seeds from great distances to these barren coral reefs and deposit them there. These seeds develop into graminous plants or trees; aquatic birds visit the yet destitute strip of land, and shortly afterward there appear insects and amphibia, carried thither by the waves on living trees.

—The area of Oceanica, by far the greater part of which is situated between the tropics, may, according to an approximate estimate, the only one possible, be 1,156,000 square kilometres. All the islands and groups of islands of Oceanica may be divided into three great principal divisions, based upon differences in the physical conformation, and in the institutions and manners as well as in the languages of the natives. Melanesia (or West Polynesia) comprises the islands, extending from west to cast, thence southeast, which encircle the Australian continent like a wreath. To these islands belong the extensive island of New Guinea with the neighboring groups, the Luisiad archipelago, the archipelago of New Britain and the Admiralty islands, the Salomon islands, the Queen Charlotte islands, the New Hebrides, New Caledonia and the Loyalty islands. The islands of Melanesia are inhabited by the Papuas, a dark skinned people, who are also called Negritos or Australian negroes, on account of there being some similarity between them and the natives of Africa. To Polynesia belong the following islands and groups of islands: New Zealand, the Fiji islands, Tonga, Samoa, the Hervey islands, the Society group of islands, the Australian islands, the Tuamotu, the Marquesas, and the Sandwich or Hawaiian islands. In New Zealand the European population prevails at present. The Fiji islands are accounted as belonging to Polynesia, because the inhabitants of these islands, although. Melanesians as far as their language and physical conformation are concerned, possess the same degree of civilization as the Polynesians. The islands of Polynesia are inhabited by a light brown, well formed race of men, accessible to civilization, good seamen, and somewhat resembling the Malays. By the term Micronesia is designated the group of islands situated in the north-western part of the Pacific ocean, and extending north and west near the coasts of Japan and the Philippine islands; this group of islands is inhabited by that part of the Polynesian race which differs from the Polynesians proper in peculiarities of character, mode of living, and chiefly by the difference in languages. These (mostly low) islands are divided into three groups: the Ladrones, the Bonin islands north of them, and the Caroline islands, the Marshall and the Gilbert islands.

—Throughout nearly the whole of Melanesia oppressive heat prevails, which, combined
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with the humidity of the densely wooded islands, is as prostrating as it is injurious to health; the climate of the other islands is warm, but not disagreeable, because of the sea breezes, and is as agreeable as it is healthy. While on the low islands vegetation can not be called rich and luxuriant, on the high islands it is of a tropical abundance. The mountains are for the most part wooded to the top; the trees are high, and serviceable for building. Among the food plants the following are to be found on all the larger islands: the cocoanut tree, the banana tree, different kinds of taro or arum, the bread-fruit tree, the pandang, yam-root, and the sweet potato; besides these, there are the sugar cane, the pineapple, the coffee tree, the lemon and orange trees: in short, nearly all the useful plants of warmer climates. While New Guinea vies with the Moluceas in the abundance and peculiar character of its plants and the magnificence and grandeur of its forests, its vegetation, without losing its luxuriance, shows a decline in so far as the number of varieties is concerned; thus, Tahiti seems to have but 500 different plants, Tuamotu only about fifty, Waihu (Easter island) some twenty only. It is equally striking that not only the vegetation on all of these islands is of a character similar, for the most part, to that of the vegetation of India, but also that it retains this character even in the most easterly islands, which, although nearest to America, possess none of the American types of plants. The same law applies, on the whole, to the distribution of animals; however, there is a general lack of land mammalia on these islands in so far as that lack has not been done away with in more recent times, by the importation of domestic animals. It is true, there are larger quadrupeds in New Guinea, but only kangaroos and nocturnal animals. Besides these, the Europeans, who first visited these islands, found of land mammalia only the hog, the dog and the rat, and even these not on all the islands. Birds are more numerous. Fowl, pigeons, parrots, different kinds of singing birds, snipes, herons, wild ducks and numerous sea fowl were found on almost all these islands. Besides these, there are the bird of paradise in New Guinea and the cassowary, distributed as far as New Britain. Sea animals, fish and turtles are exceedingly numerous in the waters surrounding these islands; the dugong (Halicore cetacca) is found between the tropics. Whales are still caught in the southern and northern parts of the ocean, and the widely distributed sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) has given rise to active fisheries. Shells and corals present a greater variety of brilliant colors and forms than almost anywhere else in the world. Snakes, mostly of a harmless character, are found only on the western islands, probably not farther than on the Tonga group; there is, however, one harmless species of snake which is said to be found on the Marquesas; the crocodile is not found except in the extremest western part of this territory. Sharks are frequent everywhere, and there are also poisonous fish. But few species of insects are found; most frequently they are met with in the western islands.

—Comparative philology has shown that the native population of Oceanica came from Indo-China and from the Indian archipelago. On all the larger islands of the Indian archipelago there is a dark colored race of men, called Papuas, and another of lighter color, the Malay race, which originally inhabited the southeastern parts of Asia, and which in the distant past removed their habitations to the Indian archipelago; these two races are also to be found in Oceanica. The dark colored Papuas are the natives of Melanesia, while the lighter brown Malayo-Japanese element prevails in Polynesia; the now nearly extinct Micronesians are more similar to the Tagalian element.

—As a rule the inhabitants of the high islands are stronger, taller, handsomer, of lighter color, and better developed; on the low and more barren islands they are shorter, less strong, uglier, and of a darker color. The color of the skin of the Polynesians varies from light to dark brown, with a hue of yellow or olive-green: their hair is mostly of thick growth, black and smooth; their eyes are black; their mouths are well formed; their foreheads well developed; the nose is either short and straight, or long and of aquiline shape; the form of the face is oval. The Micronesians are of lighter color, their figure is more graceful and agile, their expression brighter, their noses more prominent and bent, and not so flat. The difference in their languages is still more pronounced. While the language of the Melanesians is distinguished by more numerous and harsher consonants, and is clearly distinct from the Malay and Polynesian languages, the phonetic system of the Polynesian languages evinces great poverty, a certain weakness and want of force; the Micronesian languages, however, as far as their form is concerned, are the most closely connected with the simpler Malay family of languages, having also an intimate relationship with the Polynesian languages. While the several languages of the Polynesian family are almost only dialectically distinguished from each other, there are great differences in the languages spoken on the Micronesian groups. As far as mental capacity is concerned, the Melanesians are inferior to the Polynesians; love of war and warlikeness, distrust and suspicion, are the principal features of their character; cannibalism, too, is practiced by most of the Melanesian tribes. The Polynesians, on the contrary, although as a rule they also practice cannibalism in as far as they have not been converted to Christianity, occupy a higher intellectual position than others living in a state of nature; they are eminently skillful in copying, or at least in assuming, the outward appearance of European manners. The Micronesians also are well endowed intellectually, very receptive, and possess a certain physical cleverness; they are hospitable, friendly, good natured, peaceful and honest, but sometimes very revengeful and blood-thirsty.

—The religious ideas of the
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Melanesians are vague and confused. Thus, on some of the islands they believe in a power which has created and governs all things. Others worship the sun, while the Tanncese and the New Caledonians seem to have no religion whatever. Besides this, every individual has his own guardian spirit. The Polynesians believe in a number of high gods, by whom the universe has been created, and who, although with some diversity, are worshiped throughout all Oceanica. Besides these high gods the Polynesians worship an immense host of inferior deities, of elementary genii, fairies and giants. There is, besides, a third class of deities, consisting of apotheoses of human beings. The Tabu, too, forms part of the religious ideas of the Polynesians. In Micronesia religion is based on the belief in an invisible supreme being, and, in addition thereto, sometimes on the belief in invisible intermediary beings.

—In regard to social relations Melanesia is also very backward. The population of each island is divided into many tribes, which, as a rule, are enemies of one another. The tribes have each a chief, for the most part, however, without authority; and they are classed by villages into numerous small subdivisions, with a common ruler on important occasions. In Polynesia, however, there are two estates to be distinguished: the nobles, who are related to the gods, and the common people, who are of this earth only and without soul. Between these two estates, that of the landed proprietors, in many instances, has assumed the intermediate position of a third estate; thus in some places, for instance in Tahiti, the high nobility merely consists of the king, the king's family, and their nearest relatives. They also have generally a kind of feudal system, in which one king or superior chief rules over several subordinate chiefs, who derive their landed property from him, and who in turn owe him service in case of war. A similar feudal system is in existence in Micronesia, but there the estates are divided into the nobility, the semi-nobility and the common people. Even as far as industry and skill are concerned, the Melanesians rank below the Polynesians. They pursue fishing and to a limited extent agriculture. Some of the groups of islands have no connection whatever with Europe. Only in the New Hebrides and the Loyalty islands did the sandalwood commodity give rise to an active traffic, since European vessels transported the wood from these islands to Asia. For centuries, however, an active trade has been carried on between the inhabitants of the western and north-western coasts of New Guinea and those of the Moluccas. New Caledonia, it is true, has been brought into connection with Europe in consequence of its occupation by the French; but that intercourse is inconsiderable. In Polynesia agriculture is highly developed. In building houses and boats, as well as in manufacturing bast-cloth (which is frequently very beautiful), weapons and tools, the Polynesians display great skill. The trade in sandalwood, pearls, cocoa oil, and the catching of trepangs and whales, ever since the end of the eighteenth century, attracted many European ships to these waters and gave rise to an active intercourse with the inhabitants of these islands.

—In Micronesia, too, agriculture thrives, as far as the condition of the soil is favorable. With their skillfully constructed boats the natives make extensive voyages for trading purposes; they export the products which they manufacture in large quantities, as, for instance, boats, pandang mats, ropes and twine of cocoanut fibre, weapons of cocoawood, implements made of the wood of the bread-fruit tree, cloth, baskets, sails, and, above all, hammocks, which are very much in demand. Ever since the white element established itself on the islands a marked decrease of the native population has been noticeable. On the Hawaiian group and in Melanesia the population has decreased to about one-fifth since the days of Cook. In Micronesia, too, the contact with white men, chiefly in consequence of destructive diseases, such as small-pox and syphilis, having been brought into the country, has had the same effect.

—II. AUSTRALIA. In former times and in a wider sense, under the name of Australia was comprised the extensive group of islands in the Pacific ocean scattered between the coasts of Asia and the Indian ocean, and the coast of America. In a narrower sense the name Australia is used today to designate the insular continent, the Australian continent (formerly called New Holland), while the other islands and groups of islands belonging thereto are known by the collective name Oceanica. The Australian continent, in the south-eastern part of the Indian archipelago, is situated entirely on the eastern hemisphere.

—The population of Australia consists of natives and of Europeans recently settled there. The farther the Europeans penetrate from the coasts into the interior and cultivate its soil, the more are the natives confined to the deserts and the nearer they approach extinction. In the settled portions of Australia they gradually disappear before European civilization, as do also in part the native flora and fauna. At the time of the first arrival of Europeans, there may have been about 50,000 Australians wandering about in the now colonized portions of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. In the year 1851 the number of natives was estimated at 1,750 in New South Wales, at 2,500 in Victoria and at 3,780 in South Australia; in 1872 there were still 3,369 natives in South Australia; in Victoria, there were but 1,330 native Australian aborigines left, while the number of aborigines in New South Wales had dwindled down to 984. The total number of natives for the whole continent can not be given with certainty. The latest estimates showed that their number does not amount to more than 60,000. The native population of Tasmania is now entirely extinct. Including Tasmania and New Zealand, which are officially considered part of the Australian colonies, there are at present seven Australian colonies, irrespective of the Northern
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territory under the administration of South Australia and peopled by but few white men. The area and population of each of the colonies is shown in the following table:

To this there are to be added:

Thus Australia had, in 1873, an area of 2,945,227 English square miles, and 1,721,696 inhabitants, exclusive of the natives (only 0.57 inhabitants to the square mile). The larger cities are, in Victoria: Melbourne, with 193,698 inhabitants; Ballarat, with with 24,260; Sandhurst, with 27,642; Geelong, with 22,618; in New South Wales: Sydney, with 134,756 inhabitants; in South Australia: Adelaide, with 27,208 inhabitants; and in Queensland: Brisbane, with a population of 19,413. How rapidly the population of these colonies increased by immigration is apparent from the fact, that in 1821 the population of New South Wales was only 29,783; that of Victoria, in 1836, only 224; that of South Australia, in 1838, only 6,000; that of Queensland, in 1848, only 2,257; and that of West Australia, only 11,743.

—The principal occupation of the colonists is the raising of cattle and the cultivation of the soil. The chief branch of stock raising at present is the raising of sheep, which, within a short time, will secure to England the entire foreign demand for wool. In the interior of the colonies the lands are divided into farms; in the frontier districts, however, the colonists live on so-called stations, which are isolated encampments of shepherds. Besides this, the produce of gold, copper and hard coal is of great importance; the fisheries, especially whaling, are worthy of mention. Australia exports chiefly gold, wool, tallow and copper, and imports English manufactures of every description, although, especially lately, the industry of the colonies has largely developed.

—Each colony has its own governor, assisted by an executive ministry and a legislative body. One-third of the representatives in the parliaments are chosen by the government, and two-thirds are elected by the inhabitants; parliament has a right to enact laws, in so far as they are not at variance with the laws of England, and it is authorized to dispose of the receipts of the colony, in so far as they are not derived from crown lands. All bills passed by parliament must be ratified by the governor on behalf of the English government. All lands belong to the government by law, and are sold to the highest bidder at public auction. Besides this, unsold crown lands are leased for an insignificant consideration for the raising of cattle. The English government has of late kept no troops in the colonies; the latter, therefore, organized volunteer corps, of a total strength of something over 10,000 men. For the protection of the coasts a fleet of iron-clads is being built at the expense of the colonies. At present the fleet is represented by the steam advice boat "Victoria" and the monitor "Cerberus." The wooden steam frigate "Nelson," in the harbor of Melbourne, is used as a training ship for young seamen for the merchant and naval marine.

—The discovery of gold in 1851 gave a most powerful impulse to the immense growth of the Australian colonies. Victoria's production of gold reached 11,900,000 pounds sterling in 1856; in 1866, it is true, it decreased to 5,900,000 pounds, but in 1868 it rose again to 6,600,000 pounds. From 1866 to 1873, inclusive, the production of gold in the colony of Victoria alone amounted to 11,024,231 ozs. (@ £4, an aggregate of £44,096,924). Besides gold, wool is a staple product of Australia. In 1810 the first consignment of wool, of about half a bale (140 lbs.) arrived in Europe; in the year 1820, 100,000 lbs. were sent to Europe; in 1867, 113,000,000 lbs.; in 1868, 135,000,000 lbs. (of this quantity 68,000,000 pounds came from Victoria, 30,000,000 from Queensland, and 29,000,000 from New Zealand). In the year 1871 the four Australian colonies (excluding West Australia) exported wool to the amount of £11,974,000.

—Cattle breeding is also very important. The Australian colonies have at least 6,000,000 head of cattle; and since 1867 considerable quantities of preserved meats are exported to England and Bremen. About 1,025,000 kilogrammes, for instance, were exported in August, 1872. Lastly, South Australia exports considerable quantities of wheat and copper. In 1872 the last named colony exported about 25,000,000 kilogrammes of copper ore.

—At the end of 1873 the length of railroads in the Australian colonies was 2,042 kilometres. Of these, New South Wales had 652 kilometres, Victoria 708, Queensland 351, South Australia 305, and West Australia 26 kilometres. Since Oct. 21, 1872, Australia is connected with Europe by cable. The colony of South Australia established a line of telegraph from Port Augusta, on the gulf of Spencer, through the heart of the continent to Port Darwin, on the coast of northern Australia, while the English government laid a cable from Java to Port Darwin. The distance between Adelaide and Falmouth is 20,000 kilometres; of this distance the submarine cables represent a length of 14,700 kilometres. A dispatch of ten words from
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Adelaide to London now costs 189 marks, and it takes, in the average, fourteen hours for a dispatch to make its way from Adelaide to London. The principal towns in the colonies are connected with each other by telegraph. The colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland alone had over 24,000 kilometres of telegraph lines at the end of 1872. Since January, 1874, Australia has three different postal connections with Europe: the older line, via Point de Galle and Suez, in the hands of the colonies of Victoria, South Australia, West Australia and Tasmania: the second, via San Francisco and New York, in the hands of the colonies of New South Wales and New Zealand; the third, via Torres Strait, Singapore and Suez, in the hands of the colony of Queensland.

—At the end of 1872 the receipts and expenditures of the several colonies were as follows:

The loans were made principally for the purpose of building railroads, harbors, etc.

—The following summary tables show the area of the various colonies, and their population from 1876 to 1881 inclusive:

OCHLOCRACY.

OCHLOCRACY. The rule of the multitude. Polybius was the first to use the term. The good governments, according to him, are royalty, aristocracy and democracy; the bad ones monarchy, oligarchy and ochlocracy. Barthélemy St. Hilaire does not consider this definition to be very exact. It is not correct so far as royalty is concerned, which is only one of the forms of monarchy; but the denomination ochlocracy is perfectly correct, much more correct than the word demagogy, which only indicates a means of popular government, and not that government
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itself. Aristotle calls democracy what Polybius calls ochlocracy. "Aristotle," says Barthélemy St. Hilaire, "always uses the word demos to designate the most numerous part of the political body. Whenever the word people is found in Aristotle, it must be understood to mean, not the totality or majority of the nation, which would include the slaves, but only the lowest class of the political body, that which prevailed at Athens, but which, in the greater part of the Greek republics, played only a secondary rôle." It seems to us that demos, in the political language of the
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Greeks, does not signify the lowest class of the people, nor even the mass of the inhabitants, including the slaves: demos (populus and not plebs) meant what is known in France as the commune, or, what amounted to the same among the Greeks, the nation.

—Ochlocracy is the rule of the poorest and least enlightened part of the nation, which is ordinarily the most numerous. But, although superior in numbers, as it can not represent the general will, it is at bottom only a government of the minority. The despotism of the greater number, like the despotism of a single individual, is established rather by usurpation than by consent. Who would freely conclude such contract? It is needless to say that these two forms of government are as often turned to individual advantage by officials (demagogues and viziers) as they are exercised by those whose power they proclaim.

—Ochlocracy is almost never provided for in constitutions. Was it an ochlocracy which the government established at Rome, when the lex hortensia gave the force of law to the plebiscita? Who does not see that the patricians had always the right to sit in the comitia by tribes? According to all appearances, it is true, their voice could be neutralized by the force of numbers; but it is so in every pure democracy. In Florence, in 1282, the lords were declared inadmissible to public offices, unless they disnobled themselves by causing their names to be inscribed on the registers of some trades-guild. Lastly, we have the law against the nobility during the reign of terror in the French revolution. At Athens ochlocracy was established under the favor of the law. Men of merit were then excluded, on account of their wealth or their birth, from all part in public affairs; the philosophers were persecuted, the allied cities oppressed or destroyed. But this Athen an ochlocracy had a great love of liberty, great political good sense, a taste for the arts, and sometimes even moderation. Athens and Florence are almost the only two examples of the direct power of the majority legally established. Most frequently this despotism of the multitude follows in the wake of a revolution which overthrows the power of kings or of nobles; it establishes itself arbitrarily, without rule, and without any regard for the general interest or the interest of all whose will it does not represent, or for individual interests, the most sacred of which are the
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rights of man, and which the author of the Contrat Social justly regards as independent of the general will. "In fact," says he, (book ii., chap. 4). "so soon as there is question of an individual right, upon a point which has not been regulated by general and anterior agreement, that right becomes a bone of contention. It is a case in which the individuals interested are one of the parties and the public the other, but in which I can neither see the law which is to be followed, nor the judge who is to declare it. It would be ridiculous, then, to leave the question to an express decision of the general will, which can only be the conclusion of one of the parties, and which for the other, consequently, is only a strange individual will, inclined to injustice and subject to error." If such be the character of the omnipotence of the state over the individual, such must be the omnipotence of one part of the nation over the other, and if "the life and liberty of a private person are naturally independent of the public person" (book ii., chap. 5), there is a much stronger reason why the life and liberty of a private person should be independent of a collection of private persons, like an oligarchy or an ochlocracy.

—The history of the Paris commune, in 1871, presents a good example of what an oligarchy is. Whatever was the latitude allowed its leaders, they were obliged to satisfy the general will of their soldiers: a power impersonal, diffuse, arbitrarily transferable, and which at a given moment resides entirely in the hands of a national guard as well as of a delegate (minister). The reason of this is, I think, that this kind of government, having the habit of legislating on all things in an absolute manner by exhausting at one stroke all legal sanctions, makes everything an affair of state. Besides, such a government is essentially military, both on account, of the incapacity of the people to conceive any other political organization than an army, and because of the violent circumstances which give it birth, and which drive it to extremes.

JACQUES DE BOISJOSLIN.

O'CONOR

O'CONOR, Charles, was born in New York city Jan. 22, 1804, and was admitted to the bar in 1824. He very soon became a recognized leader in his profession, to which he gave himself devotedly. He has never entered political life, but his national reputation as a constitutional lawyer made him against his will the candidate of those democrats who refused to support Greeley in 1872. (See DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, VI.)

A. J.

OFFICE-HOLDERS

OFFICE-HOLDERS, Danger of an Aristocracy of. There is probably no objection to permanent tenure in office, or to tenure during good behavior, which has a stronger hold on that portion of the public which has no direct interest in the spoils system—that is, which does not seek office as the reward of political services—than the objection that it would convert the officers into a sort of aristocracy, whose manners toward those with whom they had to transact business would be haughty and overbearing. I can hardly describe this objection better than in the words of a western friend of the movement, in a private letter written nearly two years ago. He said: "The people mean by this [an aristocracy of office-holders], that a continuance in office of the same set of men creates in the mind of the office-holder the idea that he owns the office, and instead of being a public servant, he becomes a master, haughty toward those whom he ought to serve. Is it not quite a general experience with office-holders of long standing, that they are apt to become somewhat overbearing? I am inclined to think that they view it in that light, and my experience is based upon conversation with men of ordinary position in society, who make our majorities for us, who must be educated to whatever of good there is in the reform idea, and must be consulted as to its adoption, if the reform ever becomes permanently ingrafted upon our government and administration."

—If Americans had had any such experience as this of the effect of permanence in office on the manners of office-holders, I admit freely that it would be very difficult for civil-service reformers to make head against it. In politics no a priori argument can stand for a moment with the mass of mankind against actual observation. There would be no use, for instance, in our saying that the effect of appointment through competitive examination upon the character of office-holders would be so improving that they would be sure to be polite and considerate in their intercourse with the people, if the people had found that permanent officers, selected by any method whatever, were haughty, overbearing, and acted as if the offices were their private property. Nothing is more difficult to eradicate than the remembrance of insulting treatment at the hands of an aristocracy of any kind. If the American people had suffered in mind even, though not in body or estate, from such a class at any time since the revolution, and that class happened to be a permanent office-holding class, we should, in short, be forced to admit, that great as might be the abuses of the present system, it was certainly the one best adapted to the conditions of American society, and that we must make the best of it, just as we make the best of the drawbacks on universal suffrage.

—Curiously enough, however, no trace of any such experience appears in the history of the American civil service. Down to 1820, office-holders practically held during good behavior. It was considered at first doubtful whether the president had the discretionary power of removal at all. It was settled in 1789 that he had it, but its exercise was long viewed with great disfavor. It was, said Webster, speaking in 1835, "regarded as a suspected and odious power. Public opinion would not always tolerate it, and still less frequently did it approve it. Something of character, something of the respect of the intelligent and patriotic part of the community, was lost by
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every instance of its unnecessary exercise." And it was very sparingly exercised. During Washington's administration only nine persons were removed from office; during John Adams', ten; during Jefferson's, thirty-nine; during Madison's, five; during John Quincy Adams', only two. In 1820 the first change in this tenure was made by the passage of an act which fixed at four years the term of all those called accounting officers, that is, officers who had the handling of considerable sums of public money. Now, if this act was due, in part even, to the popular perception of the growth among the office-holders of pride of station and of a sense of proprietorship in the office, it would undoubtedly have found expression in the discussions which preceded or attended its passage. But there is no trace of any such motive in the reports or chronicles of the day. Nothing of the kind appears to have been alleged by the promoters of the measure. In fact, it does not appear to have occurred to any one as an argument likely to help its passage. The bill was due to the fact that there had been many defalcations and irregularities among this class of officers, owing to want of proper supervision, and to the belief that if the tenure were limited to four years, and they were thus compelled to account periodically by mere operation of law, they would be more careful and strict in the discharge of their duties in the meantime.

—In 1830 a resolution was introduced in the senate, calling on the president for the reason of his removing certain officers; and in the debate which followed, Mr. Benton, of Missouri, stated very clearly and succinctly the motives which animated those who brought about the legislation of 1820. He said: "The legislator in 1820 naturally asked himself what term and tenure of office would attain the desired public security? To hold for life would be too irresponsible. To fix his tenure during good behavior would not remedy the evils of the old law. There must be a process at law to convict him of the cause before the removing power could be exerted. To make him removable at the will of the president alone, as in the case of 1789, would make the president too absolute; and hence the provision for a term of years, provided he so long behaved faithfully, removable at the pleasure of the appointing power during his term, if he gave cause."

—Now, what were these "evils of the old law," to which he refers? He thus describes them, and his description was not gainsaid by anybody: "By the old law there was no summary power except the disputed one of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, to arrest the career of official delinquency; and the process was doubtful and dilatory by which the cause of removal was to be established, whether by impeachment, indictment, or by civil suit. The evil of the old law was, that while the government was plodding through some tedious process of law, amidst its delays and proverbial uncertainties, the defaulter could embezzle our funds and ruin our affairs so far as they lay within his control, and escape to Texas, etc., before the process had ascertained whether there was lawful cause for removal or not."

—In short, the act of 1820 was intended to provide a safeguard against peculation. The safeguard, it is true, was a clumsy one, but nobody appears to have thought of it as a safeguard also against the growth of bureaucratic pride and insolence. Webster spoke on the same subject five years later, in a debate on a bill repealing the act of 1820. He was opposed to this act, but he confessed that some good had resulted from it. "I agree," he said, "that it has in some instances secured promptitude, diligence and a sense of responsibility. These were the benefits which those who passed the law expected from it, and these benefits have in some measure been realized." He goes on to say, however, that the benefits wrought by the change have been accompanied by a far more than equivalent amount of evil—an opinion which, if he were alive to-day, he would probably express in a still stronger and more unqualified form. But neither he nor any of his contemporaries appear to have thought of the act as an act for the abolition of an official aristocracy, nor for reminding office-holders that they were the servants, not the masters, of the people. It made them prompter and more diligent than they had been in writing up their books, and in collecting and arranging their vouchers, and in having their balances properly adjusted at the expiration of their term; but nowhere is there any indication that it was intended to reach the evil which we now hear spoken of as the very probable result of a tenure during good behavior, and as the greatest objection to a recurrence in our time to the old system. Webster defended the repealing bill, on the ground that the act of 1820 had given the president too much power, by creating vacancies for him to fill which he would not have ventured to create for himself, and which the constitution, in his (Webster's) view, did not intend that he should have the power of creating, and the creation of which demoralized the service. He advocated the retention of the old tenure during good behavior, leaving the offenses committed by officers to be punished by some legal process, instead of having the tenure of office settled on the theory that every officer would commit offenses if left undisturbed in his place more than four years. In fact, he advocated it on precisely the grounds on which the friends of civil-service reform now advocate it. "I think," said he, "it will make the men more dependent on their own good conduct, and less dependent on the will of others. I believe it will cause them to regard their country more, their duty more, and the favor of individuals less. I think it will contribute to official respectability, to freedom of opinion, to independence of character; and I think it will tend in no small degree to prevent the mixture of selfish and personal motives with the exercise of political duties." But it evidently did not occur to him that it was necessary
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to show that it would not create a haughty bureaucracy.

—The spoils system, as we now know it, was introduced by Jackson. The removals, which only amounted to two altogether under John Quincy Adams, suddenly rose in Jackson's first year to nine hundred and ninety. This sudden change in the way of looking at places in the federal service of course provoked a great deal of discussion and denunciation. Jackson's use of his power was fiercely assailed and fiercely defended during his two terms, both in and out of congress. But we may search the debates and the newspapers between 1830 and 1840 in vain for an assertion that the revolution had been called for, or was justified by the effect of security on the manners of office-holders, or by the growth of a feeling among office-holders that their tenure of their places made them a class apart from and superior to the rest of the community. There was, instead, a great deal of assertion, in Jackson's defense that, if tenure during good behavior had lasted, this feeling would have sprung up, just as there is now much prediction that, if this tenure were to be restored, the feeling would spring up. But no one alleged that it had sprung up, and had constituted a reason for beginning the practice of frequent removals, to which the absurd name of "rotation" was afterward given. In other words, no attempt was made to justify Jackson's introduction of the régime under which we are now living by pointing out that particular effect of the old régime on the office-holding mind, which is now alleged as the chief obstacle to its restoration. In short, the American people really knows nothing from its own experience, however much it may know in other ways, of the tendency of permanent tenure to create and perpetuate a caste.

—The belief that this tendency exists, must, therefore, be a deduction from the experience of foreign nations, or from general principles of human nature. It must rest, in other words, on the assumption that what happens in England or on the European continent is sure to happen here, and that it is his security of tenure which gives the foreign official that sense of his own superiority for the display of which he has long been famous. Nothing is older in story than the "insolence of office." We can go back to no time, in the annals of the old world, when the man "dressed in a little brief authority" was not an object of popular odium. See, it is said, what the manners of the German and Russian, and even the French and English, officials are: such will the manners of our officials be should we ever permit them to hold their places, as these foreigners do, during good behavior, and fail to remind them by frequent or periodical dismissals without cause (which is really what is meant by short fixed terms) of how little consequence they are to the community which they serve. The answer to this is, that the argument rests on the assumption that greater security of tenure constitutes the only difference between the condition of the American and that of the European office-holder, whereas there are numerous other differences. Nothing has so much to do with a man's manners as the manners of the society in which he lives. No one can wholly, or even in great part, withdraw himself from this influence without partial or complete isolation, such as that in which soldiers live in barracks or camp, or monks in their monastery. In order to make any body of men really peculiar, either mentally or physically, we have to take possession of their whole lives, and impose great restrictions on their intercourse with the community at large, and effect a considerable, if not complete, severance between their interests and the general interest. No modern state, however, subjects its civil functionaries to any such treatment. They all, out of office hours, live as they please. They marry and are given in marriage, and spend their salaries in precisely the same manner as other salaried people. Their society is the society of persons of like tastes and like manners. They are, in short, an integral part of the community, getting their livelihood by a kind of labor in which a large body of their fellow-citizens are engaged. A clerk in the postoffice or custom house or treasury, is occupied in very much the same way as a clerk in a banking house or store. If, therefore, the manners of the government officials be marked by any peculiarity not visible in those of employés of private firms, it must be due to something else than the kind of work they do, and the manner in which they spend their salaries. It is due, in fact, to the place held by the governing class in the social and political organization.

—If this governing class be a social aristocracy, the office-holders, as the machine through which power is exercised, will naturally, and, indeed, almost inevitably, contract the habit of looking on themselves as a part of it. In a society made up of distinctly marked grades, the government officials almost inevitably form a grade, and copy every body else in looking down on the grades below them. The English or German official gives himself airs and thinks himself an aristocrat because, as a matter of fact, his official superiors are aristocrats, and the government is administered in all the higher branches by an aristocracy. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a servant of the crown to avoid arrogating to himself a share of the crown's dignity. In any country in which politics is largely managed by an aristocracy, the aristocratic view of life is sure to permeate the civil as well as the military service, be the terms long or short. In such a country, a great deal of the pleasure of life is derived from the reflection that one has "inferiors." The nobleman takes comfort in his superiority to the commoner; the gentleman, in his superiority to the man in trade; the barrister, in his superiority to the attorney; the merchant, in his superiority to the shopkeeper. It would be impossible for any system of appointment or any tenure of office to cut off the government officers, any more than any other class, from this source of happiness. The social position the
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place gives them is one of the rewards of their services, and they would be more than human if they did not reveal their appreciation of it. The state official really shows his sense of his own importance no more than, if so much as, any other man who has an assured income and considers his position "gentlemanly." The manners of the government clerk in England very much resemble those of the successful barrister's clerk, or the clerk in the great banking house; they are neither better nor worse.

—If the English and German officials were all appointed and held office under the spoils system, and had their "heads cut off" every time there was a change in the ministry, or a new man got the king's ear, there is every reason for believing that they would be much more insolent or overbearing than they are now, as they would share in the excitement of the political strife, and in the pride of victory, and in the contempt for the vanquished, which form so marked a feature in official life here. They would, too, fall rapidly into the habit, which is so strong among our office-holders, of treating non-official criticism of their manner of performing their duties as simply a weapon in the hands of those who want their places, and not as a help toward the improvement of the public service.

—In the United States, on the other hand, not only are the traditions of the government democratic, but the social organization is democratic. What is of still more importance for our present purpose, the popular view of the social value of different callings is thoroughly democratic. There is little or no conventional dignity attached to any profession or occupation. As there is hardly anything honest which a man may not do for hire without damage to his social position, so there is hardly anything he can do for hire which will raise the value of his social position. In every country in the world the office-holder, like everybody else, bases his own opinion of himself and his office on the opinion of them entertained by the public. He thinks highly of them because his neighbors do. The Prussian or English civil or military officer bristles with the pride of station, largely because the public considers his station something to be proud of. So, also, in America, the office-holder does not bristle with pride of station, because nobody thinks his station anything to be proud of. He is not kept humble by the insecurity of his tenure, but by the absence of popular reverence for his place. The custom house or postoffice clerk as a matter of fact knows very well that the world thinks no more of his place than it thinks of the place of a bank clerk or commercial traveler. One of the very odd things in the popular dread of an office-holding aristocracy is, that it arises out of the belief that an aristocracy can build itself up on self-esteem, simply. But no aristocracy has ever been formed in any such way. It grows upon popular admission of its superiority, and not simply on its own estimate of itself. The attempts which have been occasionally made to create an aristocracy in new countries, or in countries in which the respect for station has died out, have always failed miserably for this reason.

—Moreover, association with the government and the exercise of a portion of its authority do less, and must always do less, for an office-holder in this than in other countries, because there is here absolutely no mystery about government. Its origin is not veiled from the popular gaze by antiquity, or tradition, or immemorial custom. Nowhere else in the world does sovereignty present itself in such naked, unadorned simplicity to those who have to live under it. Nowhere else is so little importance attached to permanence either in government office or any other office. In America it brings a man no particular credit to remain long in the same position doing the same thing. In fact, with the bulk of the population it brings him some discredit, as indicating a deficiency of the great national attribute of energy. Outside the farming class, the American who passes his life in the position in which he began it, without any extension or change of his business, or without in some manner improving his condition by a display of enterprise or activity, is distinctly held to have failed, or, rather, not to have succeeded. There is probably no country in the world in which the popular imagination is so little touched by a contented and tranquil life in a modest station, or by prolonged fidelity in the discharge of humble duties. Public opinion, indeed, almost exacts of every man the display of a restless and ambitious activity. The popular hero is not the contemplative scholar, or the cautious dealer who relies on small but sure profits for a provision for his old age. It is the bold speculator, who takes great risks, and is in constant pursuit of fresh markets to conquer, and new demands to supply. It is not "the poor boy" who stays poor and happy, around whom the popular fancy plays admiringly, but the poor boy who becomes a great manufacturer, or the president of a bank or railroad company, or the master of large herds, or the owner of rich mines. The very familiar personage of European counting houses and banks, the gray-headed clerk or book-keeper, is almost unknown here. In fact, employers would think but little of the young book-keeper or clerk who made no effort to improve his condition, and did not look forward to a change of pursuits before he reached middle life. It may be said, indeed, without exaggeration, that the security of tenure which contributes so much to the value of a position in Europe, counts for but little in popular estimate of it in America. Places which "lead to nothing" are not made any more attractive among us by the circumstance that they are easy to keep if one wishes. Indeed, such places are rather avoided by young men whose self-esteem is high, when they are entering on life, and those who accept them are apt to be set down as having, in a certain sense, withdrawn from the race.

—In Europe, on the other hand, security or fixity of tenure,
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owing to the very much smaller number of chances offered there than here by social and commercial conditions to the enterprising and energetic man, adds very greatly to the value of an office of any kind, and not only to its value, but to its dignity. The person who has it, even if the salary be very small, is considered by the public to have drawn one of the prizes of life, and excites envy, rather than commiseration, even among the young. The prodigious eagerness for government office in France is due, in a very large degree, to the fact that government offices are permanent—a quality which more than makes up for the extreme smallness of the salaries. In England commerce competes formidably in the labor market with the crown, and the spirit of the people is much more adventurous; but the certainty of a small income has even there attractions for the young which are unknown in this country. This certainty always has a powerful influence in exalting the social position of the man who has managed to lay hold of it, in places in which recovery from failure or miscarriage is difficult, and in which mistakes in the choice of a calling are not easily rectified. The whole spirit of American society is, however, hostile to the idea that permanence is a thing which a young man will do well to seek. This feeling will, beyond question, operate in one way, if we ever come back to tenure in office during good behavior, to lower rather than raise the office-holding class, as a class, in the popular estimation. Far from converting it into an aristocracy, it will probably put a certain stamp of business inferiority on it in the eyes of "the live men," the pushing, active, busy, adventurous multitude, who, after all, make the standards of social value which are in commonest use.

—At present, office holding as a business really gets a kind of credit from its extreme precariousness and uncertainty. It is felt that anybody who gets into it must be in some sense "practical." He may have failed in trade, or in some profession, or have, through some moral defect, lost all chance with private employers, but then he must have, if he has got a government office, made himself useful to "an influence" through some kind of "work." Successful electioneering, for instance, may not require a high order of talent, or very much character, but anybody who achieves it must have push and energy and some knowledge of men, and these are, of course, no mean qualifications for success in life. Any one who possesses them, though he may make a wretched custom house or postoffice clerk, will be sure of a certain amount of consideration from the busy world, which would not be accorded to the modest, easily contented man who, in choosing his calling, seeks only mental peace. In truth, to sum up, there is no country in which it would be so hard for an aristocracy of any kind to be built up as this, and probably no class seeking to make itself an aristocracy would, in the United States, have a smaller chance of success than a body composed of unambitious, quiet-minded, unadventurous government officers, doing routine work on small salaries, and with but little chance or desire of ever passing from the employed into the employing class. One might nearly as well try to make an aristocracy out of the college professors or public school teachers.

—There is no society which at present makes so little provision for this class as ours. We do nothing to turn them to account. They are a class eminently fitted for government service, or any service of which tenure during good behavior is one of the conditions and in which fidelity rather than initiative is a leading requirement. At present they furnish a very large share of the business failures, and contribute powerfully to produce our panics by being forced into the commercial arena without the kind of judgment or nerve which the commercial struggle calls for. If we tried to economize labor, and put the right men in the right places in our national administrative machine, we should undoubtedly offer this class, which has just the kind of talent and character we need for government work, the thing which most attracts them, by offering them positions which no commercial crisis could put in peril, and which they could hold as long as they did their work well.

—Even if it were established, however, that the selection by competitive examination and tenure during good behavior would make the office-holder feel himself the master of the people, and express his sense of his superiority in his behavior, the question whether the present system establishes a satisfactory relation between the people and the civil servants of the government would still have to be answered. It may be that the thing we propose would be no improvement on the thing that is, but the fact that the existing system has the very defect which it is contended that the new system would have, and which is offered as a fatal objection to the introduction of the new system, is one which the friends of "rotation" can not expect us to pass over unnoticed.

—It may be laid down as one of the maxims of the administrative art, that no public officer can ever take the right view of his office, or of his relation to the people whom he serves, who feels that he has owed his appointment to any qualification but his fitness, or holds it by any tenure but that of faithful performance. No code of rules can take the place of this feeling. No shortening of the term can take its place. The act of 1820 was simply a very rude, clumsy plan of getting rid of the duty of careful supervision and good discipline. Turning out all the officers every four years, in order to make sure that they keep their accounts well, instead of turning out as soon as possible those who do not keep their accounts well, and retaining as long as possible those who do keep their accounts well, reminds one of the old woman who whipped all her children every night on a general presumption of blameworthiness. A suggestion of such a scheme of precaution in a bank would excite merriment. A man's best service is given to those
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on whose good opinion he is dependent for the retention of his place. Under the spoils system, places are filled without any reference to the good opinion of the public; in fact, very often in defiance of the public. They are given as rewards to men of whom the public knows nothing, for services of which the public has never heard, and which have generally been rendered to individuals. An officer who owes his appointment to a party manager for aid given him in politics, can not but feel that his main concern in discharging the duties of his place must be the continued favor of the person to whom he owes it, and not the favor of the public which has had nothing to do with it. It is, consequently, impossible to expect such an officer to feel that the public is his master, or to show in his manner that he is in any way dependent on its good opinion. He feels that the boss or senator who got him his place is his master, and that his mode of discharging his duty must be such as to merit his approbation. He does not fancy that he himself owns the office, but he fancies that another man does, and as long as he considers it the property of any one man, it makes little difference to the public which man.

—The only way in which the proprietorship of the public can ever be brought home to office-holders is through a system which, whatever its modus operandi, makes capacity the one reason for appointment, and efficiency the one safeguard against dismissal. No such system now exists here. Those who say that the plan of the civil-service reformers would not produce it may be right, but it is not open to them to make in support of their opposition a charge which is notoriously true of the system they are upholding. Whether the proposed change, therefore, be the best one or not, some change, it must be admitted, is imperatively necessary. In fighting against any change, we are trying to avoid that adaptation of our administrative system to the vast social and commercial changes of the past half century, from which no civilized people can now escape, and which all the leading nations of Europe have effected or are effecting. Any one who takes the trouble to examine the reforms which have been carried out since 1815, in France, or England, or Germany, which in all these countries have amounted to a social transformation, will be surprised to find how much of them consists simply in improvements in administration, or, rather, how fruitless the best legislative changes would have been without improved administrative machinery for their execution. We can not very much longer postpone the work which other nations have accomplished, and neither can we avoid it by plans—like Mr. Pendleton's constitutional amendment—for getting rid of responsibility by making more executive offices elective. This, like the act of 1820, is simply a makeshift. Nobody pretends that elected post-masters would be any better than, or as good as, properly appointed postmasters. All that can be said for them is, that they would save the president a good deal of trouble under the present spoils system. But the remedy for one absurdity is not to be found in another absurdity. When a thing is being done by a wrong method, we do not mend matters by trying another wrong method. The true cure for the defects in the present system of transacting public business is, the adoption of the methods which are found successful in private business. These are well known. They are as old as civilization. They are gradually taking possession of government business all over the world. Our turn will come next, and, in spite of "politics," will probably come soon.14

E. L. GODKIN.

OHIO

OHIO, a state of the American Union, formed from the northwest territory. (See ORDINANCE OF 1787, TERRITORIES.) Its territory north to latitude 41° was a part of the Virginia cession; the remainder was a part of the Connecticut cessions, in which Connecticut retained the ownership but not the jurisdiction of the tract along Lake Erie, since known as the Connecticut reserve. The name of the state was given from that of the river which is its southern boundary, a more euphonic corruption of the Indian name Youghiogheny.

—By the act of May 7, 1800, that part of the northwest territory now included in Ohio was set off under a distinct territorial government, and the remainder was organized as the territory of Indiana. (See INDIANA.) By the act of April 30, 1802, the people of Ohio were "authorized to form for themselves a constitution and state government," and a convention at Chillicothe, Nov. 1-29, 1802, formed the first constitution, which went into force without submission to popular vote. The act of Feb. 19, 1803, did not purport to admit the state, but declared that Ohio, by the formation of its constitution in pursuance of the act of April 30, 1802, "has become one of the United States of America," and provided for the extension of federal laws to the new state. It is therefore a little doubtful whether Ohio as a state dates from Nov. 29, 1802, or from Feb. 19, 1803: the latter is the date, if the precedents in the case of the admitting acts of all other new states are to govern this case; the former, if we are to be governed by the express language of the act of Feb. 19, 1803.

—BOUNDARIES. The boundaries assigned by the enabling act and the state constitution were as follows: east, the Pennsylvania line; south, the Ohio river; west, a due north line from the mouth of the Great Miami river; and north, an east and west line drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, and thence through the lake to the Pennsylvania line. It was, however, doubtful at the time whether this northern boundary would meet Lake Erie east of the "Miami river of the lake" [Maumee]; if it should prove to do so, both the enabling act and the
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state constitution reserved the power to so amend it as to make the Maumee the terminus of the cast and west line. Before Michigan was admitted as a state, it was ascertained that a direct eastward line, as originally proposed, would enter Lake Erie so far east as to give to Michigan about half of Ohio's lake coast, and a valuable strip of land in the north, including the city of Toledo. Michigan pressed her claim, and the dispute rose to such a height as to be given the popular title of the "Toledo war." It was settled by the act of June 15, 1836, to admit Michigan as a state: its first section provided that the northern boundary of Ohio should not be a direct east and west line, but should trend to the north far enough to strike the most northerly cape of Maumee bay, thus giving Ohio the territory in dispute. Michigan at first rejected but afterward accepted admission on these terms.

—CONSTITUTIONS. The first constitution, mentioned above, made manhood suffrage universal, on one year's residence; provided for a house of representatives to number not less than twenty-four nor more than seventy-two members, to serve one year, and for a senate not more than one-half nor less than one-third the number of the house, to be chosen by districts and to serve two years; made two-thirds of each house a quorum to do business; gave the governor a term of two years; and prohibited slavery. The governor was to be chosen by popular vote, but was to have no veto power, nor any other power than to grant reprieves and pardons, convene extra sessions of the legislature, command the state forces, commission appointees, and temporarily fill vacancies occurring when the legislature was not in session. The secret of this restriction upon the governor's powers, which was continued in the constitution of 1851, may probably be found in the frequent disagreements which had taken place between Governor St. Clair and the territorial legislatures.

—A new constitution was framed by a convention at Columbus, May 6-July 9, 1850, and Cincinnati, Dec. 2, 1850-March 10, 1851, and was ratified, June 17, by a popular vote of 126,663 to 109,699. Its main alterations were that the sessions of the legislature were now to be biennial; a complicated apportionment system, apparently modeled on that of Massachusetts, was introduced; state officers, except the governor, were to be chosen by the legislature; the legislature was forbidden to loan the state's credit to corporations or to create corporations by special laws; and the judiciary was made elective.

—A new constitution was framed by a convention at Columbus, May 14-Aug. 8, 1873, and Cincinnati, Dec. 2, 1873-May 14, 1874; but it was rejected by very heavy popular majorities, Aug. 18. A subsequent attempt to revise the judiciary system was also a failure.

—Chillicothe was the state capital until 1810, and Zanesville until 1812. In February, 1812, the legislature accepted the offers of a land company to lay out a capital, and erect a state house and penitentiary. The new city was called Columbus, and the state government was removed thither in December, 1816. The constitution of 1851 formally designated it as the capital.

—POLITICAL HISTORY. Ohio was admitted to the Union at a time (1802-3) when there was practically but one party in the country, outside of New England; it was therefore of necessity a republican (or democratic) state from the beginning. It was such of choice also; the great democratic features of policy at the time, the acquisition of Louisiana, the war of 1812, and the opposition to a national bank, were all very popular in Ohio, and for thirty years there was little or no opposition to the democratic party in the state's elections. In local politics the most noteworthy features were due to the great mass of power which the constitution had concentrated in the legislature. That body, provoked by certain decisions of the state judges on the validity of state laws, passed its so-called "sweeping resolution," Jan. 7, 1810, declaring that, as the state had been organized in 1802, and as the judicial term of office was "seven years," the seats of all state judges were now vacant, no matter when their incumbents had been appointed. The judges held to their offices, and the "sweeping resolution" failed, except in causing a momentary confusion. Again, in 1818, the legislature attacked the state branch of the United States bank (see BANK CONTROVERSIES, III.), but the attempt was defeated by the United States supreme court, and was finally abandoned under cover of several angry resolutions.

—Schemes of internal improvement, chiefly in the form of roads and canals, early found favor in Ohio, so that, when the new distribution of national parties took place in 1824-30, a strong vote was developed for Adams and Clay, and the policy of internal improvements and a protective tariff which they represented. In 1824 Clay obtained the electoral vote of the state by a slight plurality over Adams and Jackson; in 1828 and 1832 Jackson obtained a majority of only ½ of 1 per cent. of the popular vote. In 1829 a Clay governor was elected, and the state government was nominally whig until 1838. The electoral vote of the state was given to Harrison in 1836.

—In 1837-8 began a general course of democratic success in the state, which lasted until 1855, with but two important breaks, the presidential
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elections of 1840 and 1844. In both of these the state's electoral votes were given to the whig candidates, Harrison and Clay respectively, and the whig candidates for governor were carried in by the current. In 1845 the whig legislature sent Corwin to the senate, in which the state was represented by democrats from 1837 until 1855, with the exceptions of Corwin and Chase.

—At its meeting in December, 1848, the lower house of the legislature was unable to organize for some time. The vote of Cincinnati had long made the five Hamilton county members democratic; the last whig legislature had therefore divided the county into two districts, thus securing two whig members. The democrats ignored the act as unconstitutional, and elected five members, as usual. The election clerk gave the two disputed democratic members certificates. In December the democrats swore in forty-two members, including Pugh and Pierce, of Hamilton county; and the whigs thirty-two, including Spencer and Runyon, contestants. Neither side would act with the other, and two inchoate houses were organized; but neither had the two-thirds majority necessary for a quorum. The dead-lock was broken by an agreement that the seventy uncontested members should organize the house, and Pugh and Pierce were seated, Jan. 26, 1849, by a vote of 32 to 31. Chase's election as United States senator in 1849 seems to have been at least partially influenced by this dispute. A strong anti-slavery element had always existed in the state democratic party, represented by such leaders as Thomas Morris and Benjamin Tappan. In this legislature the whigs and free-soil whigs together exactly equaled the numbers of the democrats, and the balance of power was held by two independent free-soilers. These agreed to vote with the democrats on nominations for state officers if the latter would repeal the "black laws" of the state against negroes (see SLAVERY, II.), and elect S. P. Chase, a free-soil democrat, to the senate. The bargain was carried out, Feb. 22, 1849, and Chase was elected.

—In 1846 and 1848 the whig candidate for governor, Bebb, was elected by a narrow majority in both cases (116,900 to 114,570, and 147,738 to 146,461); but in 1848 the electoral votes were democratic by a plurality. In 1850 Wood, a democrat, was elected governor by a vote of 133,093 to 121,105 whig, and 13,802 free-soil; and in 1853 the vote for Medill, democrat, was 147,663 to 85,820 whig, and 50,346 free-soil. In 1854 the whig and free-soil vote was united under the name of the republican party. Its first state convention was held at Columbus, July 13, 1854; and its nominee for governor, Chase, was elected in 1855 by a vote of 146,641 to 131,091 for Medill, and 24,310 for Trimble (American). The legislature was heavily republican in both branches, and the congressional delegation of twenty-one members was unanimously republican. In 1856 the electoral vote of the state was given to Fremont; it has since been given to the republican candidates invariably, the only very close popular vote being in 1876, when Hayes received 330,698, Tilden 323,182, and 4,769 were scattering.

—From 1856 until 1860 the republicans held general control of the state, though in 1857 a democratic legislature was chosen, and Gov. Chase was only re-elected by 1,481 majority over Henry B. Payne. During all this period the old national road through the middle of the state (see CUMBERLAND ROAD) was a sort of Mason and Dixon's line between the democratic southern and the republican northern halves of the state. The outbreak of the rebellion brought the state into a greater national prominence than it had hitherto had. The high intellectual and physical standard of the population enabled it to contribute more than its share of military and civil leaders. McDowell, McClellan, Rosecrans, Grant, Buell, O. M. Mitchell, W. T. Sherman, Gillmore, Sheridan, McPherson, McCook, Custer, Stanton, Wade, Chase, John Sherman, Hayes, and Garfield, were all born or resident in the state in 1861. The enthusiasm for the war, and the close union of the war democrats and republicans made the state majority heavy and steady: war appropriations in 1861 were made by unanimous votes of both parties; and the republicans nominated former democrats for governor, Tod in 1861, Brough in 1863, and Cox in 1865. In 1863 the arrest of Vallandigham (see HABEAS CORPUS) obtained for him the democratic nomination for governor; but after an excited canvass he was defeated by a popular vote of 247,194 to 185,274, and a soldiers' vote of 41,467 to 2,288; total majority, 101,099. The state remained republican until 1873, except that in 1867, when Hayes defeated Thurman for the governorship, by the narrow majority of 2,983, the legislature was democratic in both branches by majorities of one and seven respectively. The new legislature rescinded the ratification of the 14th amendment, Jan. 15, 1868, and rejected the 15th amendment, April 1, 1869. (See CONSTITUTION, III.)

—In 1873 the democrats nominated for governor William Allen, who had not been in political life since his retirement from the senate in 1849, and he defeated Governor Noyes by a vote of 214,654 to 213,837, and 20,387 scattering. The legislature was also democratic, but the other state officers elected were republicans. In 1875 the republicans brought back ex-Governor Hayes as a candidate, and he defeated Allen by a plurality of 5,644, the legislature again becoming republican. This success obtained for Governor Hayes the republican nomination for the presidency in the following year. The state has since remained republican, except that in 1877, on a light vote, the democrats elected the governor and a majority of both branches of the legislature. The new legislature proceeded to change the congressional districts of the state, which had been laid out after the census of 1870, and to reorganize the state institutions, so as to obtain a party control of them; but its work in both respects was undone by the following legislature, which was republican.

—During
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the period 1868-75 the political contests of Ohio were of national importance from the attitude of the parties. In the democratic party the "Ohio idea," that United States bonds not specifically payable in coin should be paid in "greenbacks," and that national bank notes should be superseded by government issues of paper money, had obtained control, under the leadership at first of Pendleton, and then of Ewing; and the republican party had been gradually forced to take a "hard money" attitude. The Allen-Noyes and Hayes-Allen canvasses had taken this direction; and both the success of Hayes and the defeat of Allen in 1875 had a strong influence on the party platforms of the next year, which ended the question. Since that time the regulation of the liquor traffic has become a leading question. (See PROHIBITION.) The republicans at first adopted and passed the so-called "Pond law," for the taxation of liquor selling; but this was decided unconstitutional by the state supreme court, May 30, 1882. The republicans then passed the "Scott law," which was upheld by the state court in June, 1883. It forbids liquor selling or opening saloons on Sundays, and levies a tax of $200 yearly on general liquor sellers, and $100 on sellers of malt liquors, the whole tax to go into the county and municipal treasuries.

—From 1860 until 1883 the republicans had a majority of the state's congressmen, except in 1875-7 and 1879-81. In the congress of 1883-5 there are thirteen democratic representatives and eight republicans; and the legislature is (1884) democratic by sixty to fifteen in the house, and twenty-two to eleven in the senate.

—See authorities under ORDINANCE OF 1787 for the territorial history; 2 Poore's Federal and State Constitutions; Chase's Statutes of Ohio; Schucker's Life of S. P. Chase; Moris' Life of Thomas Morris; Taylor's History of Ohio; Atwater's History of Ohio; Mitchener's Annals of Ohio; Way's Toledo War; Carpenter's History of Ohio; Studer's History of Columbus, O.; Reid's Ohio in the War (the election of 1863 is at 1:153); Report of Secretary of State, 1873 (for governors); 2 Stat. at Large, 58, 173, 201 (for acts of May 7, 1800, April 30, 1802, and Feb. 19, 1803).

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

OLIGARCHY

OLIGARCHY. The rule of a few. Aristotle, after enumerating the governments which he calls governments in the general interest, monarchy, aristocracy and the republic, treats of governments in the interest of individuals, tyranny, oligarchy and democracy (see OCHLOCRACY), which seem to him the corruption of the first three. "Hobbes," says Barthélemy St. Hilaire, "has justly remarked (Imperium, vii., 3), that 'these three second denominations are all hated and despised, but that they do not designate governments of different principles; this is precisely what Aristotle understood when he employed the word corruption.'"—"Oligarchy," says Aristotle, "is the political predominance of the rich, and democracy,
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the political predominance of the poor to the exclusion of the rich." To the objection: but what if the rich be the more numerous and govern, or if the poor be the less numerous and govern? he replies, that the rule of the minority in democracies and that of the majority in oligarchies are wholly accidental, because the rich everywhere constitute the minority, and the poor everywhere the majority. "The two parties," continues impartial Aristotle, "claim exclusively each for itself the right to make the law, and, indeed, this right belongs to both of them up to a certain point, but this right is not absolute in the one or the other. On the one hand, superior in a single point, in wealth, for instance, they think themselves superior in all; on the other hand, equal in one point, in liberty, for instance, they think themselves absolutely equal; the main object is forgotten on both sides. If political association was a commercial association for the purpose of gain, the share of the associated in the state would be in direct proportion to their investment, and the partisans of oligarchy would be in the right; but the object of political association is not only the existence of the associated, but their happiness, the well-being of families and of the different classes of the people. Those who bring the most (by their talents) to the general fund of the association, have a greater share in the state than those who, equal or superior in point of liberty or birth, have, notwithstanding, less political virtue; a greater share than those who, superior in wealth, are inferior in merit." To whom, then, should sovereignty belong? To the multitude, to the wealthy, to the good, to a single individual of superior talents, to a tyrant? "Neither to these nor to others," says Aristotle, "but to the law." And if one of the elements of the political body must be preferred, Aristotle would incline in favor of the multitude, for the reason that, if each individually errs in judgment, in the aggregate all judge well. (Book iii.) But the government which seems to him to best assure the reign of the law is the republic which borrows its principles from oligarchy and democracy. If he had been asked how the alliance of these two governments, which he calls corrupt, could give birth to the best of all governments, he would doubtless have answered that they were only had because they were exclusive, and that political wisdom should be the reconciliation of these two elements.

—Aristotle enumerates four kinds of oligarchy. (Book vi.) In the first, the magistracy and the legislative power are accessible to citizens paying a rather large amount of taxes. In the second, the amount of taxes is considerable, and the body of the magistrates is self-recruiting. In the third, public offices are hereditary. In the fourth, besides this hereditary character of public offices, the sovereignty of the magistrates takes the place of the reign of the law. The first of these oligarchies is very near akin to aristocracy or democracy; the last is "a dynasty or government of force, the most detestable of all." Oligarchies may maintain themselves by ministering to the material well-being of the people and to their artistic wants, a capital consideration in the time of Aristotle. (Book vii.) But as avarice is the vice peculiar to oligarchies, (this is also Plato's opinion), their government, together with tyranny, is the least stable of all. The rivalry of the powerful, their misconduct, their acts of violence, the creation of another oligarchy in the bosom of the first, the ambition of some who begin to flatter the people, the influence of mercenary troops, all these are so many causes of ruin. Lastly, that which injures them most is, "that they deceive the lower classes." (Book vi., 3.) They should, above all, refrain from taking such oaths, he says, as they take to-day-in some states: "I will always be the enemy of the people, and I will do them all the harm I can." (Book vii., 7.)

—We have quoted these passages from Aristotle, because they throw light upon the social state of antiquity, and because they serve to show the difference between ancient and modern politics. Thus, the moderns are nearer the etymology of the word than Aristotle himself, when they call oligarchy the government of a small number, without alluding to the wealthy, to the people, to good men, or to virtue. In many states a minority, all powerful through terror, constitutes an oligarchy in an assembly democratically elected. The oligarchy of the council of ten, at Venice, was a concentration of the aristocracy; but that of the ephors at Sparta and that of the tribunes at Rome served as a counterpoise to the authority of the senate. An oligarchy may succeed abruptly to a monarchic or popular government. Modern revolutions have put in power, under the form of oligarchy, dictators elected by the people, or by a fraction of the people, and governing in its name or their own, but always opposed to aristocracies.

—The oligarchic government of the ancients was rarely met with except in small states, in free cities, a most favorable theatre for such a concentration of collective power. This is also the case in modern times, not only in what have been called "free cities," but in other states. Oligarchy is wont to be established in a great nation, when, on account of an insurrection or a war, it is for the time being reduced to the condition of the ancient city.

JACQUES DE BOISJOSLIN.

OLMSTEAD CASE

OLMSTEAD CASE. (See PENNSYLVANIA.)

OMNIBUS BILL

OMNIBUS BILL. (See PARLIAMENTARY LAW.)

OPINION

OPINION, Public. (See PUBLIC OPINION.)

OPPOSITION

OPPOSITION. The word opposition, in politics, has two distinct meanings. Properly, it is the resistance which dissenting parties offer to the acts of the government, because their interests or opinions are at variance with such acts. It is also used to designate the parties from which this
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resistance proceeds. These parties may vary ad infinitum in point of numbers, intelligence and power; but they always constitute the opposition. An individual citizen also may resist the government, but even if he were an insurgent satrap he would be only an opponent, not the opposition.

—Opposition may exist elsewhere than in the political field. Religious opinions and even religions may engage in a struggle with each other. The dissenting parties resist and sometimes overthrow the established authority. The struggles of Christianity against Polytheism, of Protestantism against Catholicism, and of the philosophic spirit against the principle of authority, are so many examples of opposition awakened in the moral world, and which have reacted most powerfully upon politics. True, religious and philosophical oppositions differ from those purely political by the very nature of the metaphysical problems from which they spring: the destiny of man, the relations between God and the world, the government of things here below by providence. The religious struggle is carried on ardently, passionately, but with little noise; the new belief employs no arms except those of persuasion. Ideas are elaborated in the seclusion of the study, and are propagated slowly, progressively, in men's consciences. Political opposition has quite another field. It inflames the crowd in the cause of interests less sacred, doubtless, but not unimportant, and produces more immediate agitation. It is the only form for which custom has reserved the name of opposition, and the only one with which we have to do here.

—The existence of a party of opposition always supposes a certain degree of liberty and of the right of investigation. A despotic government admits of no opposition, and no argument. It can only be resisted by force, and it has no alternative but to conquer or to perish, like the Roman emperors whom triumphant revolt dragged down the steps of the Aventine Hill leading to the Tiber.

—Where there exists an infallible authority, or what pretends to be such, opposition has no raison d'être and is not tolerated. Just as religions allow no contradiction of their dogmas, theocracies and governments by divine right, which attribute to themselves a part of their infallibility, exclude all opposition. It is therefore only in free governments, in which man's activity has free play, in which his faculties are developed without hindrance, and in which his reason has sovereign command, that opposition can find a place, not by toleration, but as a right. Opposition is born of a diversity of opinions, which can be reduced to unity by no art or science, however great the effort. It answers to the divergence of interests, the rivalry and struggles of which are at the bottom of all questions, and form the warp and woof of history. Parties are formed, struggle, and contend with one another for influence and the control of the government. Doubtless a great many petty rivalries, a great many questions of persons and egotistical ambitions, enter into their disputes. But we must contemplate these struggles from a higher plane and as a whole; great principles are engaged in them and govern them. The eternal problem of human affairs is forever reappearing in them under one of its myriad forms; in the fierce battles which he wages, it is to ideas that man devotes himself; and his honor is to die for them. Let us take as an example the glorious, little, agitated and turbulent republics of Greece. A question of principle, of sovereignty, divided them, such as: "Shall the aristocracy or the democracy rule? Sparta or Athens?" And the struggle was carried on not only in states and cities; in every city the two parties were arrayed against each other, the one in power, the other constituting the opposition. What vicissitudes in the life of these parties so changeable, so quickly organized and so quickly dissolved; one day in possession of favor and success, of popularity and of the votes of the multitude, the next forsaken, annihilated; in turn and almost without interval, conquerors and conquered!

—In modern society the right of discussion, and consequently of opposition, is the very soul of representative government. This right applies not only to the making of the laws and the voting of taxes, in which the people take part through their representatives, but to all the parts of legislation, and to all public services. Opposition may even go beyond this, and attack the government and its principle. The ideal of representative government does not allow this sort of radical opposition. It is necessary that there should be, beyond all reach of discussion, a stable, fixed point, and a principle which can not be contested. In the moral world, as in the physical, motion supposes an immovable point. The constitution, whose object is the conservation of the state as a political body, may indeed, be criticised, but it can not allow itself to be denied or its principle to be overthrown. All opposition, therefore, is outside the law from the moment that it denies the political pact and seeks not the control of the government but its destruction. Hence, even in the very countries in which political commotions are most frequent, and in which power is oftenest shaken by revolution, we see that each government tries to put its principle at least beyond the reach of the storm, and puts the constitution under the safeguard of an oath. The reason is, that, wherever the constitution is called in question, normal political life has ceased to exist, and revolution has taken its place.

—England is a country which affords the world the grand spectacle of a government whose principle is accepted by all. This principle is the fixed, immovable point to which we referred above, the light-house whose foundation is beaten by the billows, but whose summit towers serenely above the storm. In such a country the opposition bears only on the direction of public affairs, on questions of influence and of persons. We need not inquire by what vicissitudes England had to pass to reach this condition of calm and of
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union.

—What combination of circumstances is necessary, in order that hostile parties may be come extinguished or abdicate? How long may their opposition last? It is plain that in the infinite variety of human affairs, no fixed rules can be laid down here.

—The old Greek theogony represents discord and friendship in the midst of the elements, co-operating in the work of the gods. The one divides the forces of nature, the other restores them to unity, and the two together produce the general harmony of the universe. Opposition, like discord, doubtless has its part to play in the harmony of the life of nations. "Every force in nature is despotic, as is all will in man. A single plant would soon cover the earth, by reproduction, if the other plants allowed it free course." (Rivarol) Opposition is an obstacle in the way of invading forces, and keeps them within their just limits. It obliges power to keep an attentive watch over its own acts, and, if we may take a witticism for an axiom, we would be obliged to admit even that it is the safeguard of power; since we can lean only upon that which offers resistance.

—In a regular representative government the opposition is always the minority. As soon as it becomes the more numerous and powerful, it assumes control of affairs, and finds the other party arrayed against it as the opposition. The opposition may be weak, or it may be strong; it may be homogeneous, or be composed of discordant and contradictory elements, united only for the needs of the struggle; in this case it constitutes a coalition. Oppositions usually have a marvelous aptitude for self-discipline; every opposition has a tendency to provide itself with leaders and to become systematic: that is, not to confine itself to criticism of isolated acts of the government, but to condemn them and combat them en masse.

—In divided countries in which the governing power is not universally accepted, it is rarely the opposition which precipitates revolutions, it prepares the way for them. Most frequently at the last moment it recoils before its own work. It confines itself to paving the road, to preparing the arena into which political parties are about to enter, and in which the forces of insurrection or of the government are to decide the fate of the state. We are not, however, without examples of oppositions which, victorious and sustained by the people, have succeeded in forcing a constitution upon the government, and in accomplishing a peaceful revolution.

—The opposition has more than one advantage over the government party. In the first place, the part it has to play is less difficult: criticism is easy, while art is difficult. The opposition which criticises is not, like the government party, responsible for its acts; its work is collective, and therefore impersonal. Moreover, as the public think that it is more honorable to attack power than to flatter it, and do not see that under many circumstances it requires more courage to defend it than to combat it, the opposition easily obtains the favor of popularity. This popularity sometimes deludes the minds of even well intentioned men, who allow themselves to believe that the opposition is necessarily in advance of the government, that it is a means and a condition of progress. This is sometimes the case, but not always. The opposition may be more enlightened and liberal than the party in power; but it may be less so. Reason and truth are no more the exclusive attributes of the governed than of the governing. Hence it can not be said absolutely that the opposition holds in its hands the future of civilization and the destinies of the world. Nevertheless, experience shows that governments, save in exceptional cases which are always rare, in which the head of the state is a man of genius, incline more frequently to immobility than to progress, and generally oppose the force of inertia to the most necessary reforms. The impulse must then come from without, and the motive power is the opposition.

—The work of oppositions thus partakes both of good and evil. But they number in their history pages of incomparable brilliancy. Posterity should not forget that in the ranks of the opposition there have been found united, courage and virtue; that they have called forth the noblest bursts of patriotism and the sublimest accents of eloquence; that great characters have been formed in them; that generous hearts have fought with them, and with them devoted themselves to humanity. What matters it after this that all the causes favored by oppositions have not triumphed? Doubtless, by the side of oppositions inspired by great principles, we find others petty, mean and retrogressive. Some have marked their passage by fertile ideas; others have by degrees become weakened and finally dropped into silence and forgetfulness. In the work of man error is ephemeral. Truth survives. We must credit opposition, the daughter of free investigation, with its truths, and pardon its errors. (Compare PARTIES, POLITICAL.)

EMILE CHÉDIEU.

ORDER OF THE DAY

ORDER OF THE DAY. (See PARLIAMENTARY LAW.)

ORDERS IN COUNCIL

ORDERS IN COUNCIL. (See EMBARGO, in U. S. History.)

ORDERS

ORDERS, Religious. (See CONGREGATIONS.)

ORDINANCE OF 1787

ORDINANCE OF 1787 (IN U. S. HISTORY). The organic law under which took place the organization of the territory west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi, and north of the Ohio.

—The acquisition of the "northwest territory" by the United States is elsewhere given. (See TERRITORIES.) After the completion of the Virginia cession, Jefferson, as chairman of a committee of three on the subject, reported to the congress of the confederation a plan for the temporary government of the western territory. As the conflicting claims of the partisans of Jefferson, Rufus King and Nathan Dane are apt to confuse the reader, it seems best to give the peculiar features of Jefferson's
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report, which was adopted April 23, 1784. 1. It covered the whole western territory, ceded or to be ceded, south as well as north of the Ohio. 2. Seventeen states, each two degrees in length from north to south, were to be gradually formed from it; one between Pennsylvania and a north and south line through the mouth of the Great Kanawha; eight in a north and south tier, bounded on the west by a north and south line through the great falls of the Ohio; and the remaining eight in a corresponding tier bounded west by the Mississippi. Even the names were to have been provided for the prospective states of the northwest, including such singular designations as Chersonesus. Sylvania, Assenisipia, Metropotamia, Polypotamia and Pelisipia, together with the less remarkable titles of Saratoga, Washington, Michigania and Illinoia. 3. "After the year 1800 there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said states other than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This prohibition, therefore, was to have been prospective, not immediate, and to have applied to all new states from the gulf of Mexico to British America. This proviso was voted on, April 19. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania voted for it; Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, against it; North Carolina was divided; and New Jersey, Delaware and Georgia were unrepresented. Not having seven states in favor, the proviso was lost. Delaware and Georgia were entirely unrepresented; New Jersey had one delegate present, who voted for the proviso, but a state was not "represented" except by at least two delegates. The language of the proviso, however, became a model for every subsequent restriction upon slavery. (See COMPROMISES, IV.; WILMOT PROVISO; CONSTITUTION, Amendment XIII.) 4. The states were forever to be a part of the United States, to be subject to the government of the United States, and to the articles of confederation, and to have republican governments. 5. The whole was to be a charter of compact and fundamental constitutions between the new states and the thirteen original states, unalterable but by joint consent of congress and the state in which an alteration should be proposed to be made. With the adoption of the report, except the anti-slavery section, Jefferson's connection with the work ceased. He entered the diplomatic service in the following month, and remained abroad until October, 1789.

—March 16, 1785, Rufus King, of Massachusetts, afterward of New York, offered a resolution that slavery in the whole western territory be immediately prohibited. The language is Jefferson's, excluding the words "after the year 1800," and changing "duly convicted" into "personally guilty." By a vote of eight states to three this was committed, and a favorable report was made, April 14 (probably); but it was never acted upon.

—In September, 1786, congress again began to consider the government of the territory, and a committee, of which Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts, was chairman, framed the "ordinance of 1787," which was finally adopted, July 13, 1787. The fairest view is that Jefferson's report was the framework on which the ordinance was built: the general scheme was that of the former, but the provisions were amplified, and the following changes and new provisions were made: 1. The prohibition of slavery followed Jefferson's, excluding the words "after the year 1800," thus making it immediate, and adding a fugitive slave clause. (See SLAVERY, V.) This article, says Dane, in a letter of July 16, 1787, to King, "I had no idea the states would agree to, and therefore omitted it in the draft; but, finding the house favorably disposed on this subject, after we had completed the other parts, I moved the article, which was agreed to without opposition." 2. On the other hand, as this was an ordinance for the government only of the territory northwest of the Ohio, its prohibition of slavery was territorially only about half as large as Jefferson's; and this may help to explain the different fates of the two. A further explanation of the passage of Dane's ordinance, even with a prohibition of slavery, has recently been brought to light by Mr. W. F. Poole (see "North American Review," among the authorities): in 1787 Dr. Manasseh Cutler, agent of the Ohio land company in Massachusetts, was ready to purchase 5,000,000 acres of land in Ohio if it should be organized as a free territory, and his judicious presentation of this fact to congress had a powerful influence upon the result. 3. Article III., and the conclusion of article IV., guaranteeing the freedom of navigation of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, were new, and seem to have been due to Timothy Pickering, of Massachusetts.

—The ordinance proper began by securing to the inhabitants of the territory the equal division of real and personal property of intestates to the next of kin in equal degree; and the power to devise and convey property of every kind. Congress was to appoint the governor, the secretary, the three judges, and the militia generals; and the governor was to make other appointments until the organization of a general assembly. The governor and judges were to adopt such state laws as they saw fit, unless disapproved by congress, until there should be 5,000 "free male inhabitants of full age" in the district: a curious slip, considering the prohibition of any other than "free" inhabitants. On attaining this population the territory was to have a general assembly of its own, consisting of the governor, a house of representatives of one to every 500 free male inhabitants, and a legislative council of five to be selected by congress from ten nominations by the lower house, and to serve for five years. The assembly was to choose a delegate to sit, but not to vote, in congress; and was to pass laws for the government of the territory, not repugnant to the principles of the following "articles of compact between the original states and the people and states in the said territory," which were to "forever
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remain unalterable, unless by common consent." I. No peaceable and orderly person was ever to be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments. II. The people were always to enjoy the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus, trial by jury, proportionate representation in the legislature, bail (except for capital offenses, in cases of evident proof and strong presumption), moderate fines and punishments, and the preservation of liberty, property and private contracts. III. Schools and the means of education were forever to be encouraged; and good faith was to be observed toward the Indians. IV. The territory, and the states formed therein, were forever to be a part of "this confederacy of the United States," subject to the articles of confederation, and to the authority of congress under them. They were never to interfere with the disposal of the soil by the United States, or to tax the lands belonging to the United States; and the navigation of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence was to be free to every citizen of the United States, "without any tax, impost or duty therefor." V. Not less than three nor more than five states were to be formed in the territory. The boundaries of three of these, the "western, middle and eastern" states, [subsequently Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, respectively], were roughly marked out, very nearly as they stand at present; and congress was empowered to form two states [Michigan and Wisconsin] north of an east and west line through the southern end of Lake Michigan. Whenever any of these divisions should contain 60,000 inhabitants it was to be at liberty to form a state government, republican in form and in conformity with these articles; and was then to be admitted to the Union "on an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatsoever." VI. "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: provided always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." This proviso was the first instance of a fugitive slave law: it was afterward added to the constitution. (See COMPROMISES, III.; FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS; SLAVERY, V.)

—The general scheme of the ordinance, with the exception of the prohibition of slavery, was the model upon which the territories of the United States were thereafter organized. (See TERRITORIES.) Upon the inauguration of the new government under the constitution an act was passed, Aug. 7, 1789, recognizing and confirming the ordinance, but modifying it slightly so as to conform it to the new powers of the president and senate. When the territory south of the Ohio came to be organized, the organization was controlled by the stipulation of the ceding states that slavery should not be prohibited; and in the case of other territories the language often differed widely from that of the ordinance of 1787; but in all cases the underlying principles have been identical, so that the ordinance might be called the magna charta of the territories. The difference in statemanship between the British and the American methods of dealing with problems closely similar is elsewhere noted. (See REVOLUTION, I.; TERRITORIES, I.)

—In the organization of the five states which have been formed under the ordinance, the privileges secured by it to the inhabitants of the territory have been imbedded in the state constitutions, usually in the preliminary bill of rights. In Indiana, in 1802, a convention, presided over by Wm. H. Harrison, sent a memorial to congress, asking a temporary suspension of the sixth article; but a select committee, John Randolph being chairman, reported that such action would be highly dangerous and inexpedient. In 1805-7 successive resolutions of Gov. Harrison and the territorial legislature to the same end were followed in each year by favorable reports from the committees to which they were referred; but congress took no action. In the summer of 1807 the effort was again renewed; but the new committee reported, Nov. 13, 1807, that a suspension of the article was not expedient. By this time opposition to the suspension was growing stronger in the territory itself, so that the attempt was not renewed. But the legislature, the same year, passed laws allowing owners of slaves to bring them into the territory, register them, and hold them to service, those under fifteen years to be held until thirty five for males and thirty-two for females, and those over fifteen for a term of years to be contracted for by the owner and the negro. In the latter case, if the negro refused to contract, he was to be removed whence he came; and in both cases the children of registered servants were to be held to service until the ages of thirty for males and twenty-eight for females. Illinois, being then a part of Indiana territory, lived under these laws until her admission as a state, in 1818, when she enacted in her constitution that "existing contracts" should be valid. In this way slavery remained practically in force all over Illinois, and the pro-slavery party controlled the state. In 1822 an anti-slavery man was elected governor, by divisions in the pro-slavery ranks, and in his inaugural he reminded the pro-slavery legislature of the illegal existence of slavery in Illinois. That body retorted by an act to call a convention to frame a new constitution. The act had to be approved by popular vote, and after a contest lasting through 1823-4, was defeated by a vote of 6,822 to 4,950. In both states provisions forbidding future contracts for service, made out of the state, or for more than one year, gradually removed this disguised slavery.

—The preambles to the constitutions of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois all recite that the prospective state "has the right of admission to the Union" in accordance with the constitution, the ordinance of 1787, and the enabling act. In the case of Michigan congress long
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neglected to pass an enabling act; the people of the territory, therefore, resting on the fifth article of the ordinance, and claiming that the only condition precedent to admission (the increase of the population to 60,000) had been fulfilled, formed a constitution, and were admitted without an enabling act. (See MICHIGAN.) It should also be noticed that the extreme northwestern part of the territory, south and west of the head of Lake Superior, was not finally included in any of the five states named, but is now a part of Minnesota.

—The second of the articles of confederation declares that each state retains "every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States in congress assembled." The power to acquire, the jurisdiction to govern, and the right to retain, territory outside of the limits of the states, are nowhere in the articles, even by implication, given to the United States. Whence, then, did congress draw the power to vest in itself the title to the northwest territory, to frame this ordinance for its government, to abolish slavery therein, and to provide for the admission to the confederacy of five new states? The "Federalist" answers the question thus briefly: "All this has been done, and done without the least color of constitutional authority; yet no blame has been whispered, no alarm has been sounded." In other words, we are to suppose that the states, tempted partly by a willingness to despoil Virginia of her vast western claims, and partly by a desire to share in the proceeds of the western territory as a common stock, were willing to allow their imbecile congress to appropriate a source of revenue to which it had no shadow of claim, and which, as it then seemed, would so increase in a few years as to make congress independent of the states. Such a supposition does far less than justice to the acuteness of the state politicians who were then the controlling class; they would have been glad to withhold the power to govern the territories from congress, and yet how were they to avoid granting it? The reason for their "whispering no blame, sounding no alarm," lay in the patent necessity of the case, in the political law which finally forces a recognition under any form of government, that it is only in non-essentials that a limitation on sovereignty can be deduced by implication, and that there are certain essential attributes of sovereignty which can only be restricted in express terms. (See also Hamilton's argument in BANK CONTROVERSIES, II.) The right to acquire property is as much the natural right of a government, however limited, as of an individual; and a government, if restricted so far as to be denied this right, is either non-existent or impotent. It is not true that circumstances, in this case, compelled the states to allow a violation of the articles of confederation; it is rather true that circumstances, in this case, compelled the state politicians to respect the natural rights of the national government, which, in so many other cases, they had attempted to limit by the general phrases of the second article. (See NATION.) We are therefore to take the sovereign right to acquire territory as the justification of the ordinance of 1787, just as in the case of the annexation of Louisiana, which was equally unauthorized by the constitution. (See CONSTITUTION, III., B, 2.)

—Undoubtedly the greatest benefit of the ordinance to the territory which it covered was its exclusion of slavery from it. It thus received the full sweep of that stream of immigration, foreign and domestic, which so carefully avoided slave soil; the strictness with which this westward stream confined itself to the comparatively narrow channel bounded by the lakes and the Ohio, is of itself a testimony to the wisdom of the sixth article. Beyond this, however, there were countless other benefits. The enumeration of the natural rights of the individual was a political education for the people of the new territory, as well as a chart for the organization of the new state governments. The stipulations for the encouragement of education, though too indefinite to be binding, have exerted an enormous influence upon the demands of the people and upon the policy of the legislatures. This whole section was thus, from the beginning, the theatre of a conscious and persistent attempt to combine universal suffrage and universal education, each for the sake of the other; and the success of the attempt, though still far from complete, has already gone far beyond any possible conception of its projectors. Most important of all, from a political point of view, the ordinance was the first conscious movement of the American mind toward the universal application of the federal principle of state government to the continent. The original states owed their formal individuality to accident or the will of the king; the inchoate states of Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee were the accidents of accidents; here, in the northwest territory, the nation first consciously chose the state system for its future development. (See NATION, III.)

—Major General Arthur St. Clair, a delegate from Pennsylvania, and president of congress during the adoption of the ordinance, was the first governor of the territory, 1788-1802. His biography, cited below, is the best exposition of the practical workings of the ordinance. When the portion of the northwest territory outside of Ohio was organized as Indiana territory (see that state), William H. Harrison became its governor, 1800-11, and was succeeded by John Gibson, 1811-13, and Thomas Posey, 1813-16, until Indiana became a state. When the separate territory of Illinois was organized (see that state), Ninian Edwards became its governor, 1809-18. Michigan, as a territory, had as governors William Hull 1805-13, Lewis Cass 1813-31, Geo. B. Porter 1831-4, and Stevens T. Mason 1834-5. When Wisconsin was separated from Michigan as a territory, its governors were Henry Dodge, 1836-41 and 1845-8, James D. Doty 1841-4, and N. P Tallmadge 1844-5. The small remainder of the territory, after the admission of Wisconsin as a
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state (see WISCONSIN; MINNESOTA), was added to Minnesota.

—For the cessions of the various states which went to make up the northwest territory, see TERRITORIES.

—The text of the ordinance is in 1 Poore's Federal and State Constitutions, 7; 1 Stat. at Large (Bioren and Duane's edition), 475; Duer's Constitutional Jurisprudence, 512; Andrews' Manual of the Constitution, App. xiii.; see also North American Review, April, 1876; Hildreth's Pioneer History, 193 (Ohio Company); Taylor's History of Ohio, 493; 1 Bancroft's Formation of the Constitution, 177, and 2: 98; H. B. Adams' Maryland's Influence in Founding a National Commonwealth; Coles' History of the Ordinance of 1787 (read before the Penn. Hist. Soc., June 9, 1856); 4 Journals of Congress, 373, 379; 3 Hildreth's United States, 449; 1 von Holst's United States, 286; 1 McMaster's History of the American People, 505; 1 Schouler's United States, 98; 2 Pitkin's United States, 210; 1 Curtis History of the Constitution, 291; 1 Draper's Civil War, 180; 1 Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, 31; 1 Greeley's American Conflict, 38; 2 Holmes' Annals, 354; 1 Stat. at Large, 50 (act of Aug. 7, 1789); Smith's Life of St. Clair; Burnet's Settlement of the Northwest Territory; Washburne's Sketch of Edward Coles; Story's Commentaries, § 1310; The Federalist, xxviii. (by Madison); and authorities under articles referred to. For Jefferson's claims to the authorship of the ordinance, see 1 Benton's Thirty Years' View, 133; 1 Randall's Life of Jefferson, 397; for Dane's, see 3 Webster's Works, 397; for Dane's, King's and Pickering's, see 2 Spencer's United States, 202; Pickering's Life of Pickering.

ALEXANDER JOHNSTON.

OREGON

OREGON, a state of the American Union. It was claimed to have been rightfully a part of the Louisiana purchase, as its western boundary was defined in 1819 by the Florida treaty (see ANNEXATIONS, I., II.), and it was evidently under this claim that Lewis and Clarke first explored it in 1804-6, by direction of President Jefferson. The conflicting claims are elsewhere given. (See NORTHWEST BOUNDARY.) The people of Oregon, without waiting for action by congress, formed a provisional government in 1843. After several failures to pass an act for the organization of the territory (see WILMOT PROVISO), an act for that purpose became law, Aug. 14, 1848. It covered all the territory of the United States west of the Rocky mountains and north of latitude 42° north (see WASHINGTON TERRITORY), and prohibited slavery by putting in force the provisions of the ordinance of 1787. No enabling act was passed by congress, but a state convention at Salem, Aug. 17—Sept. 18, 1857, under authority of the territorial legislature, adopted a state constitution. Under this the state was admitted Feb. 14, 1859.

—BOUNDARIES. The boundaries fixed by the act of admission were as follows: on the north, the Columbia river and latitude 46° north; on the east, the Snake river from latitude 46° north to its junction with the Owyhee, and thence directly south to latitude 42° on the south, latitude 42°; and on the west the Pacific ocean. These differed from those claimed by the state constitution in only one respect: the latter took as a northern boundary the Columbia and Snake rivers, thus including the territory between latitude 46° and the Snake river, which congress preferred to assign to Washington territory.

—CONSTITUTION. The first constitution is still in force. It restricted suffrage to whites, on six months residence and one year's declaration of intention to become a citizen; authorized the legislature to prohibit the immigration of persons not qualified to become citizens of the United States; provided for a legislature of two houses, the senate to consist of sixteen members, chosen by districts for four years, and the house of representatives of thirty-four members, chosen by districts for two years; forbade the passage of special or local laws in a number of specified cases; gave the governor a term of four years, and made him eligible not more than eight in twelve years; provided that he should be chosen by popular vote, or, in default of a popular majority, by a joint vote of the legislature; forbade the legislature to charter any bank, to subscribe to the stock of any company, or to charter any corporation otherwise than by general law; and ordered the state capital to be fixed by popular vote. Two other questions were submitted to popular vote, with the following result: by a vote of 7,727 to 2,645, slavery was prohibited in the state; and by a vote of 8,640 to 1,081, free negroes or mulattoes not then resident in the state were forbidden to "come, reside or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain any suit therein," and the legislature was authorized to pass laws for their removal and exclusion, and for the punishment of persons who should employ or harbor them. The constitution has not since been amended in any particular. In 1882 the legislature changed the time of inauguration of state officers from September to January, so that the new governor holds from September, 1882, to Jan. 1, 1887.

—POLITICAL HISTORY. The long interval between Oregon's adoption of a constitution and its admission as a state was due mainly to the "anti-negro clause" of the constitution, which made republicans in congress very unwilling to vote for a ratification of the instrument. The clause was due to the existence of three parties in the state, one in favor of slavery a second opposed to it, and a third opposed to negro immigration. The last two united to prohibit both slavery and negro immigration; but the first was sufficiently strong to compel the convention to submit to the people the question of "slavery or no slavery." After the ratification was complete, and the state admitted, the first and third factions united against the second, and made Oregon a
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democratic state. The democratic party of the state had so strong a pro-slavery element in it that one of the Oregon senators, Lane, was the Breckinridge candidate for the vice-presidency in 1860. In that year the republicans obtained the electoral vote of the state by a plurality, the popular vote being as follows: Lincoln, 5,270: Breckinridge, 5,006, Douglas, 3,951; Bell, 183. From that time until 1868 the state was republican in state, congressional and presidential elections. In 1868 the democrats, by about 1,000 majority, obtained the electoral vote of the state for Seymour, and elected the congressman and a majority of both houses of the legislature. Since that time the parties have alternately been successful in the state's biennial elections. In 1870, 1874 and 1878 the democrats carried the state, electing the governor, congressman, and a majority of the legislature, in 1872, 1876 and 1880, the "presidential years," the republicans secured the electoral vote of the state, the congressman, and a majority of the legislature. (See OREGON, under ELECTORAL COMMISSION.) In 1883 the legislature is republican by the following majority: senate, sixteen to fourteen; house, thirty-nine to twenty-one.

—The most prominent political leaders of the state have been the following Lafayette Grover, democratic congressman in 1859, governor 1870-77, and United States senator 1877-83; Joseph Lane (see his name); John H. Mitchell, republican United States senator 1873-79; and George H. Williams, republican United States senator 1865-71, and attorney general under Grant, 1872-5.

ORIENTAL QUESTION

ORIENTAL QUESTION, The. By this, or by the equivalent term, Eastern Question, is usually understood the political complications which are ever on the point of arising, in the Ottoman empire, in consequence of the mutual antagonism of the Christian and Mussulman populations which inhabit that country, on the one part, and of the prevision of the conquest of Turkey by the Russians, on the other.

—The extreme diversity of the nations occupying the vast territory subject to the porte, and the bonds, ethnographic or religious, which unite the greater number of them to Russia, constantly imperil the integrity of the Turkish monarchy, and threaten, at any moment, to cause fresh revolutions in that country, the consequences of which would be felt immediately all over Europe; for the possession of Constantinople would give the czars an increase of power which would destroy at a blow the foundation on which the balance of power in Europe rests. Said Napoleon, in an address to the French senate, dated Jan. 29, 1807: "Who can calculate the length of the wars and the number of campaigns it would be necessary to enter on, some day, to repair the evils which would result from the loss of Constantinople, if the love of cowardly case and the seductions of the great city should prevail over the counsels of a wise foresight? We should leave our posterity a long inheritance of wars and misfortunes. The Greek cross being triumphant from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, we should, in our own day, see our provinces overrun by a swarm of fanatics and barbarians; and if in this too tardy struggle civilized Europe should perish, our guilty indifference would justly excite the complaints of posterity, and would be a title of opprobrium to us in history."15 Napoleon, however, foresaw all the dangers which threaten the existence of Turkey when he wrote: "The patriotism of the peoples and the policy of the courts of Europe would not prevent the downfall of the Ottoman empire."

—The origin of these dangers, and of all the political complications connected with the serious problem called the Eastern or Oriental question, goes back to the reign of Othman I., who, at the head of numerous Asiatic hordes, occupied several provinces of Asia Minor, and thus laid the foundations of an empire which was destined to find its chief power in the subjection of Greek peoples. The taking of Constantinople during the reign of the sultan Mohammed II. definitively marked the establishment of the Turks in Europe, who thenceforth planned the subjection of the principal neighboring states and the extermination of the Christians.

—To these religious and ethnographic causes must be added the tendencies of Russian policy to pursue its work of universal domination by the conquest of the Ottoman empire. The remarkable testament of Peter I. left by that prince to his successors, and deposited among the archives at Peterhof (near St. Petersburg), tells what should be and what are the political views of Russia in this regard. In this document, whose length does not allow its reproduction here, in extenso, the czar declares that he considers the Russian people called by Providence to universal domination; that the "Russia which he had found a rivulet and intended to leave a mighty stream, would, under his successors, become a great sea, destined to fertilize impoverished Europe, and that its waters would overflow spite of all the dikes which weakened hands would oppose to them, if his descendants knew how to direct their course." It was to teach the czars, his successors, how to direct that course, that he thought it expedient to leave them his counsels or instructions. After having explained the necessity of certain conquests which have been accomplished since his time, he continues: "§ ix. Get just as near as
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possible to Constantinople and the Indies. The prince who reigns there trill be the real sovereign of the world. To this end, excite continual wars now in Turkey and now in Persia; establish ship builders' yards on the Black sea; get control by degrees of that sea, as well as of the Baltic, two points necessary for the success of the project; hasten the decay of Persia: penetrate as far as the Persian gulf; restore, if possible, by way of Syria, the old commerce of the Levant, and advance to India, which is the great emporium of the world. Once there, it will be possible to do without England's gold. § xi. Induce the house of Austria to drive the Turk from Europe, and on the occasion of the conquest of Constantinople calm its jealousy, either by exciting a war between it and the old states of Europe, or by giving it a part of the conquest which is subsequently to be taken from it. § xii. Attach to and gather about you all the disunited or schismatic Greeks spread through Turkey; become their centre and support, and establish in advance universal predominance by a species of sacerdotal royalty or of sacerdotal supremacy: this will give you so many friends among your enemies."

—It is well known how religiously this testament has been followed to the letter, and how consistent the politics of Russia have been with the doctrine laid down in it. The Crimean war (1855-6) was the consequence of a premature endeavor to establish the suzerainty of the czar, not precisely over Ottoman territory, but over all subjects of the sultan who belonged to the Greek church whose pope and head is at St. Petersburg. The sympathy of the Hellenic populations with the Russian government betrayed itself at that period, and was all the more keen as there exists among them a profound hatred for the Ottoman element. The treaty of Paris, by taking away from Russia the right to maintain a war fleet in the Black sea, only postponed the time when the czar would descend on Turkey anew. But only a moment was needed for that stipulation to become illusory. That moment came in 1870, on the occasion of the Franco-Prussian war, when Russia asked and obtained in its favor a revision of the treaty of 1856 on this point.16

—We shall not try to foresee what shall one day be the solution of the Eastern question. That problem, which presents itself periodically to European cabinets, with new corollaries, is so complex that it is unreasonable to predict what may be in store in relation to it. The powerlessness of Turkey in Syria and Lebanon, and the perpetual antagonism of the Maronite Christians and the Druses create, in Asia Minor, motives for the intervention of France and England similar in character to those which Russia finds for intervention in European Turkey, in which Christians of the Greek rite utter incessant complaints against the Mussulman authorities and claim the protection of the head of their religion. A perceptible improvement in the internal organization of the Ottoman empire can not be denied. Still it is doubtful whether it can early enough make the progress which it remains for it to make in order to put itself in a condition to meet the storms which sooner or later will break upon it.

LEON DE ROSNY

OSTEND MANIFESTO

OSTEND MANIFESTO (IN U. S. HISTORY). The filibustering expeditions against Cuba (see FILIBUSTERS) occasioned anxiety in Europe as to the possible future action of the United States government in concealed or open favor of such expeditions. In 1852 Great Britain and France jointly proposed to the United States a tripartite convention, by which the three powers should disclaim all intention to obtain possession of Cuba, and should discountenance such an attempt by any power. Dec. 1, 1852, the secretary of state, Everett, refused to do so, while he declared that the United States would never question Spain's title to the island. Everett's letter has been severely criticised, but it seems justifiable as a refusal to voluntarily and needlessly restrict future administrations.

—Aug. 16, 1854, President Pierce directed the American ministers to Great Britain, France and Spain, James Buchanan, John Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé, to meet in some convenient city and discuss the Cuban question. They met at Ostend, Oct. 9, and afterward at Aix la Chapelle, and drew up the dispatch to their government which is commonly known as the "Ostend Manifesto." It declared, in brief, that the sale of Cuba would be as advantageous and honorable to Spain as its purchase would be to the United States; but that, if Spain should obstinately refuse to sell it, self-preservation would make it incumbent upon the United States to "wrest it from her," and prevent it from being Africanized into a second St. Domingo.

—The Ostend manifesto was denounced in the republican
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platform of 1856, as "the highwayman's plea that might makes right"; and was not openly defended by the democratic platform of 1856 or of 1860, except that the latter declared in favor of the acquisition of Cuba by honorable and just means, at the earliest practicable moment.

OUTLAWRY

OUTLAWRY. The declaring one by superior authority outside of the protection of all law, was a proceeding not unknown to the Greeks and Romans, but was inflicted by them when offenses had been committed against the national religion, and was more in the nature of ecclesiastical excommunications and interdicts such as are found in some Christian countries.

—At common law process of outlawry originally lay only in cases of treason, but was at later periods extended to minor offenses and even to civil actions. The consequences, however, of a judgment in outlawry, and the legal steps to obtain it, were very different in the last mentioned cases.

—In Bacon's Abridgment outlawry is defined as a punishment inflicted on a person for contempt and contumacy, in refusing to be amenable to and abide by the justice of that court which has lawful authority to call him before it. And as this is a crime of the highest nature, being an act of rebellion against the state or community of which he is a member, so does it subject the party to divers forfeitures and disabilities, for hereby he loses liberam legem, is out of the king's protection. It is further said in the same place, that in outlawry in treason and felony the law interprets the party's absence as a sufficient evidence of his guilt, and, without requiring further proof, accounts him guilty of the fact, on which ensues corruption of blood and forfeiture of his whole estate, real and personal, which he holds in his own right.

—One of the most memorable proceedings in outlawry was directed against the well-known agitator and member of parliament, Wilkes Booth, in consequence of his withdrawing to France, while an information for libel was pending against him (1770). On technical grounds (Lord Mansfield presiding) the proceeding was quashed. The process of outlawry was so beset with technical difficulties that it could hardly ever be successfully maintained. In the United States it never was generally recognized either in criminal or civil cases. This process of outlawry, as found in the common law, as applicable to minor offenses and even to civil cases, if it ever prevailed on the continent of Europe, was soon superseded by process and judgment in contumaciam, taken from the Roman and canon law even in criminal cases. Parties sued or indicted may, under that process, be summoned by publication and be condemned in their absence, but not without evidence being heard, which condemnation, however, upon appearance within certain prescribed periods, may be set aside on terms.

—Outlawry in the English sense was there confined to high and capital crimes, and was frequently applied by the secret courts, held by certain tribunals in some parts of Germany, under imperial sanction (Vehm Gerichte) in the middle ages. Those convicted, when within the power of the tribunal, were at once executed by the subordinate officials, and those who escaped were outlawed, and liable to be executed wherever found by officers or members of the brotherhood. In Rome and Greece everybody could kill an outlaw, and it is a somewhat disputed point whether at earlier times this was not also allowable at common law before it was expressly prohibited by statute. In the holy German empire outlawry, called Reichs-Acht (Bann), played a great part, but it was more of a political than strictly legal process. It was adopted in cases of felony, committed by the great vassals against the emperor, their liege lord; also in cases of great crimes and misdemeanors not strictly breaches of fealty. The imperial great bann had to proceed from the diet; the lower bann could be pronounced by local courts, and had but a local application. Upon complaint, sustained by the estates of the empire assembled in diet, the accused was summoned, usually three times, and upon default conviction followed and declaration of outlawry. With the great vassals the decrees could only be enforced by a real war. The outlawry of Henry the Lion (the head of the Guelph faction), duke of Saxony and Bavaria, was perhaps the most noted instance of this process. Having failed to heed the summons to answer the impeachment at three different sessions of the diet, outlawry (the Ober- or Aber-Acht) was pronounced against him at the diet held at Wurzburg (1180) by the emperor Frederick I. (Barbarossa, chief of the Ghibelins). It was a political act more than a legal one, as it also declared a forfeiture of his estates held as benefices, and not in his own right, which was not usual either at common law or at the German law. Henry took up arms, but being unsuccessful, fled to his father-in-law, the king of England. Later, amnestied, he was reinstated into Brunswick and Luneburg, his allodial possessions.

—The outlawry of the elector John Frederick of Saxony, and of Philip, landgrave of Hesse, the Protestant leaders in the reformation, was wholly irregular, being declared by a mere edict of the emperor Charles V., without sanction of the diet (Reichstag) 1547. Equally irregular had been the outlawry of Martin Luther, by a mere minority of the diet of Worms in 1521, when the session, by the departure of most of the members, had been virtually closed. Some of the most powerful princes of the empire at once protested against it, and the emperor never took steps to execute it. All formalities had been neglected. The only resolution that was legally passed against Luther was one binding the estates of the empire not to obstruct the
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papal bulls against Luther, which had only a clerical effect by excommunicating him. Other imperial outlawries sanctioned by the diet were those against the elector palatine Frederick, king of Bohemia, and his allies, in 1619, and against the electoral princes of Bavaria and Cologne in the war of the Spanish succession, on account of their alliance with France in 1702. An attempt to outlaw Frederick the Great of Prussia, at the commencement of the seven years war (1758) failed in its initial steps. Purely political acts, without any legal proceedings, were the outlawry of the Baron de Stein, ex-minister of Prussia, by Napoleon I., in 1809, and that of Napoleon himself by the princes assembled at the Vienna congress in 1815, as also that of Gen. B. F. Butler by the confederate states.

GUSTAVE KOERNER.

OUTLET

OUTLET. An outlet, properly speaking, is an opening made for the sale of certain products. We say that a merchant seeks an outlet for his wares, when he is in quest of places where he can sell them; that he finds an outlet abroad, when his products are ordinarily sold abroad. To open outlets to a country is to give it the opportunity of entering upon friendly relations with other countries, which will afford it new avenues of sale. It would seem that this subject does not allow of any really economic development. But J. B. Say has almost given us a theory of it. We here reproduce his thoughts on the matter. They have been approved and appreciated by all economists.—"As the division of labor makes it impossible for producers to consume more than a small part of their products, they are compelled to seek consumers who may need these surplus products. They are compelled to find what is called, in the language of commerce, outlets, or markets, that is, means of effecting the exchange of the products which they have created against those which they need. It is important for them to know how these outlets are opened to them.

—Every product embodies a utility, the faculty of ministering to the satisfaction of a want. A product is a product only by reason of the value which has been given to it; and this value can be given to it only by giving it utility. If a product cost nothing, the demand for it would be infinite; for no one would neglect an opportunity to procure for himself what satisfies or serves to satisfy his wants, when he could have it for the wishing it. If this were the case with all products, and one could have them all for nothing, human beings would come into existence to consume them; for human beings are born wherever they can obtain the things necessary to their subsistence. The outlets opened to them would become immense in number. These outlets are limited only by the necessity under which consumers are to pay for what they wish to acquire. It is never the will to acquire, but the means to acquire, that is wanting.

—Yet in what does this means consist? In money, we shall be hastily told. Granted; but I ask in turn, by what means does this money come into the hands of these who desire to buy? must it not be obtained by the sale of another product? The man who wishes to buy must first sell, and he can only sell what he produces, or what has been produced for him. If the owner of land does not sell with his own hands the portion of the harvest which comes to him by reason of his proprietorship, his lessee sells it for him. If the capitalist, who has made advances to a manufacturer, in order to get his interest, does not himself sell a part of the manufactured goods, the manufacturer sells it for him. It is always by means of products that we purchase the products of others. Beneficiaries, pensioners of the state themselves, who produce nothing, are able to buy goods only because things have been produced, by which they have profited.

—What must we conclude from this? If it be with products that products are purchased, each product will find more purchasers in proportion as all other products shall have increased in quantity. How is it that in France eight or ten times more things are bought to-day, than under the miserable reign of Charles VI.? It must not be imagined that it is because there is more money in that country now; for if the mines of the new world had not increased the amount of specie in circulation, gold and silver would have preserved their old value; that value would even have increased; silver would be worth perhaps what gold is worth now; and a smaller amount of silver would render the same service that a very considerable quantity renders us, just as a gold piece of twenty francs renders us as much service as four five-franc pieces. What is it, then, that enables the French to purchase ten times as many things, since it is not the greater quantity of money which they possess? The reason is, that they produce ten times as much. All these things are bought, the ones by the others. More wheat is sold in France, because cloth and a great number of other things are manufactured there in a much greater quantity. Products unknown to our ancestors are bought by other products of which they had no idea. The man who produces watches (which were unknown in the time of Charles VI.; purchases with his watches, potatoes (which were also then unknown).

—So true is it, that it is with products that products are purchased, that a bad harvest injures all sales. Indeed, bad weather, which destroys the wheat and the vines of the year, does not, at the same time, destroy coin. Yet the sale of cloths instantly suffers from it. The products of the mason, the carpenter, the roofer, joiner, etc., are less in demand. The same is true of the harvests made by the arts and by commerce. When one branch of industry suffers, others suffer too. An industry which is prosperous, on the other hand, makes others prosper also.

—The first deduction which may be drawn from this important truth is, that in every state the more numerous the producers are, and the more
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production is increased, the more easy, varied and vast do outlets become. In the place which produce much, there is created the substance with which alone purchases are made: I mean value.

—Money fills only a transient office in this double exchange. After each one has sold what he has produced, and bought what he wishes to consume, it is found that products have always been paid for in products.

—We thus see that each has an interest in the prosperity of all, and that the prosperity of one kind of industry is favorable to the prosperity of all others. In fact, whatever may be the industry to which man devotes himself, whatever the talent which he exercises, he will find it easier to employ it and to reap a greater profit from it in proportion as he is surrounded by people who are themselves gaining. A man of talent, sadly vegetating in a country in a state of decline, would find a thousand avenues of employment for his faculties in a productive country, where his talents might be used and paid for. A merchant established in an industrious city, sells much larger amounts than one who lives in a country in which indifference and idleness rule. What would an active manufacturer or a capable merchant do in one of the poorly peopled and poorly civilized cities of certain portions of Spain or Poland? Although he would encounter no competitor there, he would sell little, because little is produced there; whereas in Paris. Amsterdam or London, despite the competition of a hundred merchants like himself, he might do an immense business. The reason is simple: he is surrounded by people who produce much in a multitude of ways, and who make purchases with what they have produced; that is to say, with the money resulting from the sale of what they have produced, or with what their land or their capital has produced for them.

—Such is the source of the profits which the people of cities make from the people of the country and which the latter make from the former. Both have more to buy in proportion as they produce more. A city surrounded by a productive country finds there numerous and rich buyers; and in the neighborhood of a manufacturing city the products of the country sell much better. It is by a vain distinction that nations are classed as agricultural, manufacturing and commercial nations. If a nation is successful in agriculture, it is a reason why its commerce and its manufactures should prosper. If its manufactures and its commerce become flourishing, its agriculture will be better in consequence. A nation is in the same position as regards neighboring nations that a province is in relation to the country; it is interested in their prosperity; it is certain to profit by their wealth; for nothing is to be gained from a people who have nothing wherewith to pay. Hence, well-advised countries do all in their power to favor the progress of their neighbors. The republics of America have for neighbors savage peoples who live generally by the chase, and sell furs to the merchants of the United States; but this trade is of little importance, for these savages need a vast extent of country to find only a limited number of wild animals, and these wild animals are diminishing every day. Hence, the United States much prefer to have these Indians civilized, become cultivators of the soil, manufacturers, in fine, more capable producers; which unfortunately is very difficult of accomplishment, because it is very hard for men reared in habits of vagabondage and idleness to apply themselves to work. Yet there are examples of Indians who have become industrious. I read in the description of the United States, by Mr. Warden, that the tribes then living on the banks of the Mississippi, and who afforded no market to the citizens of the United States, were enabled to purchase of them in 1810 more than 80,000 francs' worth of merchandise; and probably they afterward bought from them a much larger amount. Whence came this change? From the fact that these Indians began to cultivate the bean and Indian corn, and to work the lead mines which were within their reservation.

—The English rightly expect that the new republics of America, after their emancipation shall have favored their development, will afford them more numerous and richer consumers, and already they are reaping the harvest of a policy more in consonance with the intelligence of our age; but this is nothing compared with the advantages which they will reap from them in the future. Narrow minds imagine some hidden motives in this enlightened policy. But what greater object can men propose to themselves than to render their country rich and powerful?

—A people who are prosperous should therefore be regarded rather as a useful friend than as a dangerous competitor. A nation must doubtless know how to guard itself against the foolish ambition or the anger of a neighbor, who understands its own interests so badly as to quarrel with it; but after it has put itself in the way to fear no unjust aggression, it is not best to weaken any other nation. We have seen merchants of London and Marseilles dread the enfranchisement of the Greeks and the competition of their commerce. These men had very false and very narrow ideas. What commerce could the independent Greeks carry on which would not be favorable to French industry? Can they carry products to France without buying her products and carrying away an equivalent value? And if it is money that they wish, how can France acquire it otherwise than by the products of her industry? A prosperous people is in every way favorable to the prosperity of the other. Could the Greeks indeed carry on business with French merchants against the will of the latter? And would French merchants consent to a trade which was not lucrative to themselves and consequently for their country?

—If the Greeks should become established in their independence, and grow rich by their agriculture, their arts and their commerce, they would become for all other peoples valuable consumers; they would experience new wants, and
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have wherewith to pay for their satisfaction. It is not necessary to be a philanthropist to assist them; it is only necessary to be in a condition to understand one's own true interests.

—These truths so important, which are beginning to penetrate among the enlightened classes of society, were absolutely unknown in the periods previous to our own. Voltaire made patriotism consist in wishing evil to one's neighbors. His humanity, his natural generosity, lamented this. How much happier are we, who, by the simple advance of enlightenment, have acquired the certainty that we have no enemies but ignorance and perversity; that all nations are, by nature and by their interests, friends of one another; and that to wish prosperity to other peoples, is to love and serve our own country."

J. B. SAY.

OVER-PRODUCTION

OVER-PRODUCTION. Over-production is a term which is clear and simple as each man applies it in his own business, but which is liable to be misunderstood when applied to the business of the community. This combination of apparent clearness and real doubt has caused much confusion and unnecessary argument; so that we must begin with a careful analysis of its meaning in various aspects. It is defined by Malthus as occurring "when the production of anything is carried beyond the point where it ceases to be remunerative." For instance: a manufacturer owns his plant, but depends upon credit for the purchase of raw materials and the means of paying wages. Now if his product brings the expected price, it compensates him for all these advances, and gives him his business profit in addition. But a slight fall in the price of his product, from whatever cause it arises, will sweep away his business profit. This is the point where production ceases to be remunerative. A further fall will not only leave him without business profit, but also without compensation for the wages he has advanced, or without the means of paying for his raw material; so that the more he has manufactured the poorer he is for it. To him, then, all production on these terms is over-production. And to him the result is the same in its main features, whatever be the reason for the fall in price. He could have avoided the worst of the trouble to himself, had he but curtailed his production in time.

—But if we go one step back, and look for the causes which occasion this fall in price, we find that it may be due to any one of three things: 1. A disproportionate production of this particular article; 2. A hindrance of any kind which prevents placing goods in the most advantageous market; 3. A general fall in prices. As regards its relation to the general business of the community, the first of these causes acts in a very different way from the second and third; and it is to the first of these causes that the name over-production is most properly applied. The mistakes of Sismondi, Chalmers and even Malthus in this connection arose from their supposing that it meant the same thing in the second and third causes as in the first. They said that depression in individual branches of trade arose from over-production in those branches, and inferred that when phenomena of the same kind were seen everywhere there was the same kind of over-production everywhere. But this is by no means the case. Disproportionate production is one thing; failure to sell at the expected price may be quite another. It may look like the same thing to the individual producer, and yet mean very different things respecting the past and future of the business community. Disproportionate production is liable to occur at any time in individual branches of trade. It is only when it becomes much more serious than usual, and is combined with other causes, that it is followed by a commercial crisis. But the so-called general over-production does not ordinarily occur except in connection with a crisis, and there it is a result rather than a cause. By keeping this distinction in mind we shall avoid confusing the real partial over-production which usually precedes commercial crises, with the apparent general over-production which is characteristic of their advanced stages. It is with the former of these that this article mainly deals.

—Disproportionate production on a small scale, such as constantly occurs in one or another branch of industry, readjusts itself so easily as to occasion no harm except a temporary one to a few individual producers in that line. The capitalists see their mistake the moment their business profits are swept away, and use less capital in their business; the excess of supply is quickly consumed, prices recover, and the business goes on as before. But special circumstances may aggravate the trouble to the extent of a public calamity, and special lines of production are particularly liable to such misfortune. When large amounts have been invested in fixed capital, such as machinery, public works, or, above all, railroads, such excess of supply can not be quickly consumed, but exerts its depressing influence for a long time to come. And, on the other hand, when special lines of production have been stimulated by a temporary demand at abnormally high prices, as was the case in the iron business in 1873, and is liable to be the case to a less marked extent in almost any other line of manufacture, it will be found that after the excess is worked off and consumed, prices still do not recover anything like their former figures. We thus have two types of business liable to over-production; one because the excess of supply is permanent, the other because the high price is abnormal. The history of railroad building on the one hand, and of iron production on the other, furnishes the most striking instances of these results, as well as the most complete statistics for our purpose.

—Ever since the invention of railroads excessive railroad building has been a leading symptom of an approaching crisis. In 1837, it is true, the system of railroads was not yet far enough advanced to be an important factor, yet here we had the same kind of extravagance
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in building roads and canals on borrowed capital, and the same effects from it. It was in England in the years preceding the crisis of 1847 that the railroad first assumed its importance as a subject of speculative production. Of the workings of a railroad system capitalists knew very little, but they went into the business with the same blind confidence that their ancestors had gone into South sea bubbles. And this reckless investment of capital was encouraged by the blind belief of legislators in unchecked railway competition as an unmixed benefit to the public. 678 companies—for the most part, it must be said, with ridiculously short lines—applied for incorporation in the year 1845 alone; and of these 136 were actually incorporated, 65 receiving the royal assent in a single day. And this at a time when the system was in its infancy. By the end of the year 1847 the estimated value of the railways incorporated was more than a thousand million dollars, and a large part of this sum had been actually expended, while most of the work was too incomplete to bring in returns that could be used in payment of interest. There is no need, for our present purpose, of going into the further history of the crisis of 1847; in a community which had been investing its capital thus recklessly, any economic shock must needs produce the most serious results. The crisis of 1857 is not so distinctly an instance in point. There was indeed in many cases a sudden shrinkage of railroad earnings and a marked decrease in railroad building—3,647 miles being added in the United States in 1836, 2,647 in 1857, 2,465 in 1858, and only 1,821 in 1859. But this was hardly over-production in its truest sense. The shrinkage came elsewhere even more than here. There had been speculation and extravagance everywhere, and much property changed hands as values settled down to a truer basis. But there was no useless mass of lingeringly insolvent capital, almost no disproportionate production that could not be made use of in some way beneficial to the community.

—Not so in 1873. For five years men had been building railroads to an extent hitherto unheard of. High wages and prices had made the real cost of construction great, and the extravagant spirit of those years had added other items of expense. Only an abnormally stimulated trade could enable them to meet their obligations and furnish profit besides. But the panic of 1873 left trade abnormally depressed; and many roads were in no condition to meet their obligations. Sooner or later they had to reorganize; but before this could be done they succeeded in doing a great deal of harm to other people's property as well as their own. Once regarding themselves as insolvent, they felt exempt from a number of responsibilities that had hampered them. If they could not get business at a paying price they would get it at a price that did not pay, and force competing solvent roads into non-paying rates. Hence arose the railroad wars culminating in 1876, when the Grand Trunk and the Erie, then insolvent roads, swept away the profits of the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore 8 Ohio, and for the time greatly reduced investors' confidence in the New York Central. This is the typical effect of over-production: the surplus is not only in itself unprofitable, but as long as it lasts will depress values of everything with which it competes. And the continued existence of such masses of undisposable surplus may be regarded as a leading difference between the long crisis of 1873 and the shorter one of 1857.

—The extent to which railroad over-production was carried is shown by the figures in Poor's Manual. In 1869 there were built in the United States 4,615 miles of railway; in 1870, 6,070; in 1871, 7,379; in 1872, 5,878; and in 1873, 4,107: an average for five years of over 5,600 miles. In 1874 the number fell to 2,105, and in 1875 to 1,712; for the five years succeeding 1873 the average was less than 2,300, or only about two-fifths the previous. The figures for France and Germany about the same time tell a similar story. Not less striking are the figures illustrating shrinkage of value. The "Railroad Gazette" of Sept. 27, 1878, furnishes statistics on this point concerning forty-five roads dealt in by the New York stock exchange, and in soundness presumably above the average of those in the country. The aggregate value of these roads, at their highest prices in 1873 (reduced to a gold basis), was $567,000,000; at the lowest prices of the same year it had fallen to $380,000,000; while in September, 1878, it was still only $460,000,000. Still more to the purpose are the figures concerning foreclosures furnished at the beginning of each year by the "Railway Age." In 1876 there were sold under foreclosure, (this term being apparently used in a rather wide sense), 3,846 miles of road, representing $218,000,000 of capital; and in the four years succeeding, 3,875, 3,902, 4,909, 3,775, miles of road, representing investments of $199,000,000, $312,000,000, $243,000,000 and $264,000,000, respectively. One-fifth of the railway investment of the country sold under foreclosure in these five years of settlement! Whether this has taught us its lesson remains to be seen. Men have lost faith in unlimited railway competition; but a specially pernicious form of overproduction is developed in the case of parallel roads, built to sell rather than to operate; for the sake, that is, of forcing the old road to buy a controlling interest to avoid a railroad war. The enormous increase of railways in recent years (4,721 miles in 1879, 7,174 in 1880, 9,358 in 1881, 11,343 (?) in 1882) gives ground for apprehension, even though this rate of building is not likely to continue.

—In looking at over production in the iron industry, variations in price are even more striking than variations in production. In January, 1871, the average Philadelphia price of No. 1 pig iron was $30,50 per gross ton. From this time it steadily increased till, in September, 1872, the month's average was $53.87. In December, 1874, it had declined to $24, a loss of more than one-half in a little over
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two years; and this decline on the whole continued till November, 1878, when the price was $16.50, scarcely one-third of what it had been in 1872, even if we make allowance for the gold premium. In Great Britain the same change was still more marked. Scotch pig, which in 1870 had sold as low as 49¾s., rose in 1870 to 145s., and in 1878 had fallen to 42¼s., less than three-tenths of what it had brought five years before. A similar change was seen in America at the beginning of 1880, when iron, which in July, 1879, was selling at $19.25, rose to $40 and $41, only to fall, three months later, to $23.

—The reason for these extraordinary changes is to be found in the character of the demand for iron. A demand for iron at all often means a demand at any price, whether it be for a railroad that can make no money till its tracks are laid, or a factory that can make none without new machinery. But the demand that forces up the price is moderate in quantity; and though the high rates may be submitted to by the immediate demand, they may cheek the future demand. Thus, those who have gone into the iron business under the stimulus of high rates find that the pressure was only temporary; the extra supply, by the time they are ready with it, no longer wanted; and in place of the readiness to buy at any price, however high, comes an unwillingness to buy at any price, however low. Just this course of events is indicated by the statistics of iron production. The American pig iron product, which in 1870 had been about 1,859,000 net tons, and in 1871 about 1,905,000, rose under the stimulus of high prices in 1872 to 2,855,000, and in 1873 to 2,868,000 tons. But by this time the fall in prices had been so marked that the iron men checked production as best they might. In 1874 they reduced their product to 2,689,000 tons; but in spite of this reduction and of the further fall in prices there remained at the end of the year 796,000 tons unsold in the producers' hands. The further course of events is shown in the following table, compiled from figures in the report for 1881 of the secretary of the American iron and steel association:

From this it appears that in spite of diminished production and prices it was not until 1877 that they were able to reduce materially the proportion of their product unsold. As soon as they began to do this they were on a sounder basis; but what this involved may be inferred from the fact that out of 700 furnaces in the United States only about 250 were in blast in the year 1877; and that in the whole iron industry there was probably not a branch worked up to half the capacity which its fixed capital would admit. (For the statistics of the same general depression throughout the world, see "Economist," Com. Hist. and Rev. of 1878, supplement to March 5, 1879.) A repetition of some of these phenomena has been seen in the last four years; notably in the case of steel rails, whose price increased from $42 per gross ton in May, 1879, to $85 in February, 1880, but at the end of the year 1882 had fallen to $39. There was the same reckless investment of capital to meet a temporary demand at high prices, and the same impossibility of maintaining anything like those prices when the extra supply was thrown on the market.

—Railroad production and iron production furnish types of the two causes which render disproportionate production a source of lasting evil: in the former case, because the increase of supply is permanent; in the latter, because the high demand is only momentary. The introduction of machinery is apt to produce effects of the former character; the supply of articles of fashion and luxury is subject to the latter. It was the combination of these two that had a large share in causing the English crises of 1818 and 1825. Agricultural produce is less liable to these disturbances than anything else, the exception in the case of cotton in 1837 and 1839 being only apparent; the evil was due to speculation on the part of cotton producers rather than to disproportionate production of cotton. So in England in 1847, when an exceptionally good harvest was the occasion of a crisis, it was not because there was more food than people had been in the habit of demanding, but because to certain individuals, who had speculated in the price of grain, normal production meant ruin. Results like these may occur when any combination makes a speculative attempt to control production and prices both. When such a combination is powerful enough to form a monopoly, there is no doubt that a check to production generally increases their returns, the prices rising more rapidly than the quantity diminishes. And, conversely, an increase of production, even under their own hands, actually diminishes the gross returns. If an individual extends his production his gross returns are commonly increased. If a monopoly extends its production the opposite effect is quite as common.

—We have hitherto spoken of over-production only in the sense of disproportionate production. It was shown at the outset that the same effect upon individual producers might result from a failure to reach the right market, or from a general fall in prices. The first may be due to transportation difficulties, or to tariff legislation; the second, to a contraction of the currency; but by far the commonest cause of both is a commercial crisis. It renders the credit system so far inoperative that it is impossible to place goods where they are the most needed; and it so far increases the demand for ready money instead of credit documents that it has the same effect upon prices as currency contraction. It may thus happen that the appearance of over-production will occur as the result of a crisis even in
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those lines where there has been no abnormal production, merely in consequence of difficulty in doing business and in paying debts. This is what has given rise to the name and idea of general over-production.

P

PACIFIC RAILROAD

PACIFIC RAILROAD. (See INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS, RAILROADS.)

PAPER MONEY.

PAPER MONEY. If there be an experiment which has been seriously made and as to the results of which there can be no doubt, it is the experiment which demonstrates the chimerical advantages and grave dangers of paper money, employed as an instrument of production. Nevertheless, numberless deceptions, the injury done to public credit and national good faith, and the ruins of the past, do not seem to have entirely dissipated a dangerous illusion; recent facts, as well as the persistence of false doctrines, prove this but too well; the human mind frees itself with difficulty from the fatal influence exerted over it by the mirage of wealth acquired without labor, of a pretended increase of capital called into existence by the magic wand of credit, and of a new species of alchemy which transmutes paper into gold.

—Nothing, however, can be simpler than the examination of this problem, and nothing easier of solution. It suffices to know what is the part played by money, to measure how little such an arbitrary creation as paper money can do, and to understand its dangers.

—Ours is not the age in which the wealth of states was confounded with the possession of coin; money, the great wheel of circulation, as Adam Smith calls it, preserves nevertheless, however, an important place in the economy of nations; it constitutes the mechanism of exchange in the clearest and surest conditions; it enables us to set a value on all products and services; it gives activity to the creation and facilitates the distribution of wealth. It is in fact owing to money that all are impelled to the common work of the nation, and that the result obtained is divided among those who have contributed to it. It introduces a common language into the operations of social commerce.

—But it is not a language of the imagination; money is the sign and measure of values, because it is their guarantee, because it represents a value that is known, acknowledged and accepted everywhere. It is a universal commodity, while it at the same time affords each country its local instrument of purchase and sale, and of remuneration for both public and private services.

—In our day the fetters which cramp the international movement of exchanges are gradually disappearing, and a regular equilibrium may be established to adapt to the wants of each market the quantity of money necessary for the transaction of its business, when this business preserves its character of purity, and does not degenerate into fiction. Let us suppose, for a moment, that gold and silver alone, without any mixture of fiduciary signs, are the only instruments of exchange. As nothing prevents the transportation of the precious metals, they will always resume their level by going where a certain scarcity of them assures them greater advantage, and abandoning those places in which an over-abundance causes their depreciation. An admirable law of attraction governs them and proportions them to the useful services which they are called upon to render, by opposing equally a sterile abundance and a scarcity of specie. The very force of things establishes a weir for metallic wealth, which always falls into equilibrium with the wants of circulation.

—There is a risk of the situation being modified from the very moment that, in order to economize upon the mechanism of exchange, an effort is made to substitute for gold and silver artificial means more or less ingenious, and more or less sure, by calling to its aid what is called the magic of credit, whose power people are inclined to exaggerate. Two ways are open to reach this end. By following one of these ways the movement of exchanges is simplified and the number of actual payments reduced; recourse is had to those ingenious creations which render the actual intervention of specie superfluous, or limited in a number of cases, by means of bills of exchange, of open accounts in the banks, of set-offs and transfers; or else circulation is accelerated in such a manner as to increase the services rendered by each piece of money. In this way we obtain an advantage similar to that which two iron rails placed parallel upon the ground afford by the saving in friction, which increases the traction. The same result is obtained with less expenditure of force and capital, thanks to the economy and energy of the springs set at work. Here all is gain and no danger; such is the largest function of credit and an inexhaustible source of fecundity.

—But, by the side of these useful combinations, whose influence is too often ignored, we have the creation of a sign easy to manufacture, which costs next to nothing, and which is substituted in a greater or less proportion for metallic money: we refer to the bank note, which is called upon to act the part of money, because it is or ought to be accepted in business transactions to liquidate debts.

—If this
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fiduciary sign rests on the guaranty of a metallic value, against which it may be exchanged at will, and if we may accept or refuse it at pleasure, it constitutes money paper, which must be carefully distinguished from paper money. If it be imposed by authority, whether it emanates from the public treasury or from a private institution, and we are not at liberty to demand its equivalent in gold or silver, but are obliged to accept it, it degenerates into paper money. In the first case it aims to supply in part the metallic money, of which the country should reserve a sufficient amount to assure the exchange of bills for specie, and to serve in those transactions in which bank notes can not enter. In the second case it has for effect to replace metallic money even to the point of the issue of paper money with compulsory circulation or of so-called legal tender character.

—The aggregate of business transactions requires but a certain determinate amount of specie in each country at a given time. If bank bills are substituted for a part of the instruments of exchange, the surplus disappears under the form of merchandise, in order to restore the level, unless the coin be reserved in the treasury as a pledge of the paper money in circulation: thus it is that paper money drives out coin.

—We may in a certain limited measure, as we shall see, economize upon the portion of the national capital employed in the making of the instrument of exchange. An institution of credit, solidly established, may maintain in circulation a mass of bills which will be in as much favor as specie, provided the metallic reserve guarantees their payment at sight, and provided the bill represents a sufficiently important part of the monetary unit to facilitate transportation and shorten accounts. However, we can supply in this way only a portion of the money needed; but the amount of the latter relatively to the amount of business transactions diminishes in proportion as civilization advances, as society improves, and as credit is extended. In 1873 the wealth of England was estimated at two hundred milliards of francs, and its production at about twenty-four milliards; the total amount of money in the country, metallic and fiduciary, scarcely exceeded three milliards; the wealth of France in the same year was estimated at one hundred and sixty milliards of francs; its production was scarcely inferior to that of England; it had twice the amount (about six milliards) in specie and bank notes. It would be an exaggeration to reckon the wealth of Russia at 50,000,000,000 francs, and its products at 12,000,000,000; it employs about 4,000,000,000 francs in specie and paper money. The possible economy on the amount of capital employed in the medium of circulation, is therefore in an inverse ratio to the sum total of national wealth. The richer a country is, the less it gains by abandoning the solid ground of gold and silver.

—The saving of capital effected by the regular use of bank notes would be reckoned high if placed at from one-fourth to one-third of the sum required for the purpose of the exchange of wealth; if we take into consideration the necessary reserves, it does not amount to half a milliard of francs in England, and if it rises to two milliards in France, it is because of an abnormal condition, the result of the Franco-Prussian war, which can not last. It amounts, according to this showing, to the one four-hundredth part of the wealth of the United Kingdom, and to about one-hundredth part of the wealth of France. Regarding this comparison from another point of view, we may say that the interest of the metallic capital thus replaced frees England and France from an annual burden of twenty and eighteen millions of francs respectively, calculating the interest at 4 per cent. This is equivalent to about the one-thousandth part of the production of England, and to about the one three-hundredth part of the production of France. As a matter of course bank notes render much more important service in France by the facility and convenience which they afford, and by the saving which they render possible, even without taking any account of the inconveniences of compulsory circulation, to which France was subjected after 1870.

—These gains are not without their accompanying dangers, which grow more serious the more the volume of notes increases. In proportion as this volume increases, the metallic supply decreases, and as confidence is the stuff of which credit is made, if a period of calm and prosperity be succeeded by one of uneasiness, or if imperative needs require a great exportation of specie, every effort must be made to recall the absent metal, even at the cost of great sacrifices and by paying dear for it; this it is that makes the emission of bank notes so perilous; this it is that forbids us to go beyond a certain restrictive limit, unless we would resign ourselves to the dangers of compulsory circulation. If this limit, which is variable it is true, be passed, it necessarily leads to commercial crises when the fiduciary paper has been issued only as the representative sign of private engagements, and to a political crisis when paper money has been issued to meet the wants of the state.

—Adam Smith recognized the utility of the "wagonway through the air" of credit, which enables the "country to convert, as it were, a great part of its highways into good pastures and corn fields," highways represented by metallic money. "Nevertheless," he adds, "the commerce and the industry of the country, it must be acknowledged, though they may be somewhat augmented, can not be altogether so secure when they are thus, as it were, suspended upon the Dædalian wings of paper money, as when they travel upon the solid ground of gold and silver." After having pointed out the danger he endeavors to destroy the attraction of an imaginary benefit: "the whole paper money of every kind which can circulate in any country can never exceed the value of the gold and silver of which it supplies the place."

—Let us, by an extreme hypothesis, suppose ourselves in a society from which the use of the precious metals has entirely
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disappeared. If we should go beyond this, as paper money does not unite in itself the characters both of sign and of pledge, and as it does not become a commodity when it ceases to be a means of discharge from debt, it can not flow into foreign countries, and its excess produces depreciation. But who will flatter himself that he can measure exactly the amount of the media of circulation necessary in a country? This amount depends not only upon the mass but also upon the rapidity of exchanges. When the precious metals alone are employed, or when they effect the major part of business transactions, their level is maintained naturally, thanks to the weir which opens on foreign markets: this level can not but be violently disturbed when the bounds of prudence are overstepped by the issue of money paper, and especially when the nation abandons itself to the dangerous seductions of paper money.

—The danger exists even when a private institution is granted the dangerous privilege which excuses it from payment at sight; it assumes a much graver aspect when the state itself assumes this perilous function. History furnishes most sad and striking examples of the chastisement everywhere visited upon these same mistakes. France, England, Austria, Russia, and the United States, not to swell the list by citing the instances of secondary states, have paid the penalty of the system of Law and of the assignats, of the forced circulation of bank notes, of the Bankzettel, of paper roubles, and of continental money. It is a curious fact that Poland alone, a country which it is sought to blot out entirely from the map of Europe, preserved itself from this plague down to the very time of its subjugation by Russia. This latter country has, on the contrary, always had, upon a large scale, a fictitious system of circulation, which it inherited from Chinese, Tartar and Mongolian traditions. We do not wish to make any vain display of erudition, nor to enter into investigations which could be of interest only to the curious, and we shall therefore confine ourselves to recalling the fact that Genghis Khan made use of paper money, and that, toward the end of the thirteenth century, his grandson Koblai employed it in such a manner as to excite the ingenuous admiration of Marco Polo. This admiration proved only too contagious: the system, which from China and Mongolia had invaded Russia, was also admitted into western Europe. But we believe we ought to point out, as a remarkable fact, the scrupulous care with which Napoleon I, always guarded against a like attempt. He never consented to the issue of paper money. While England had resort to the compulsory circulation of paper money to resist him, and while Russia and Austria issued prodigious quantities of assignats, Napoleon ever held aloof from this disorder, and de Montalivet, minister of the interior, said, in a circular addressed to the prefects on the 25th of October, 1810. "The emperor regards paper money as the greatest scourge of nations, and as being, to morals, what the plague is in the physical order."

—By a singular concatenation of truths and errors the wisest operations of the most severely administered banks have in the end degenerated into a monstrous creation of paper money.

—Everywhere in Europe, except in Poland, the right of the crown to coin money, which had pretended to put an end to the fraud and pillage organized by local suzerains, ended by giving rise to successive lowering of the standard, lessening of the weight and debasing of the coin. The great Copernicus wrote, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, upon this important question in a treatise that is almost unknown: "However innumerable the scourges that ordinarily lead to the decline of kingdoms, principalities and republics, the four following are, to my mind, the most formidable: discord, pestilence, barrenness of the land, and the deterioration of the money. As far as the first three are concerned the evidence is such that no one is ignorant of them. But as to the fourth, if we except a few men of superior intelligence, very few concern themselves about it; and why? Because it does not ruin the state at a single blow, but little by little, by a sort of hidden action."

—The diversity and variation of moneys was one of the causes that led to the establishment of banks of deposit, which reduced these uncertain signs to a common denomination, by creating bank money fixed and invariable which took into consideration the metallic value of the specie deposited. The notes issued were fully represented by the specie deposited in the banks; to convenience and accuracy they joined the most complete security, and soon gained universal favor.

—It was noticed that the greater part of these titles continued in circulation, without any demand being made for the restitution of the specie guaranteeing them. Some banks employed the latter, thus leaving a part of their notes unsecured, at least as far as the metallic pledge was concerned. They were likewise led to attempt the inverse operation by issuing more notes than they possessed reserve in money or in bullion, thus increasing the profits of the institution and replacing a portion of their metallic stock by what we may call trust notes. They had obligated themselves to pay at sight: but as the demands for coin were not made simultaneously, these demands were met by diminishing the amount of their reserve corresponding to the titles issued. The declivity was a dangerous one, the enticement of gain urged the banks of issue to extend their operations, and to utilize more and more the marvelous power they possessed of coining in some measure money from sheets of paper rushed through a press. It is true that their obligation to immediately redeem it forced them to incessant precaution, which was constantly opposed by the allurement of gain: they were in constant danger, if they had not sufficient specie to pay at sight. The situation in this respect in our own day has not changed; it seems to us to lead to a clearer and clearer distinction
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between the issue of notes which perform the functions of money and banking operations properly so called, and to give a separate existence, by its concentration, to the power of creating these notes. The two principles, which always made war upon the liberty of the banks and the oneness of the note payable to bearer and at sight, are thus reconciled.

—At the time when the errors of the mercantile system estimated the wealth of states by the amount of gold and silver they possessed, the supplementary circulation furnished by the bank note could not but be received enthusiastically. As paper was raised to the level of gold and silver, which were considered as the equivalents of wealth, wealth could be increased at will. There remained, it is true, the troublesome condition of redemption; but this condition, it was said, was superfluous, it was an obstacle to the expansion of capital, and the sovereign authority, which was master of all, might readily do away with it. What an admirable discovery! Was not the genius of Law, as the poets of the time sang, to Enrichir à la fois, les sujets et les rois; since he opened an inexhaustible source to the spirit of enterprise, since Mississippi was called by him to become what California has since become! Thus people began by seeking in banks of deposit a remedy for the degradation of the coinage: the bank note circulated because based upon a full specie guarantee; afterward this guarantee was diminished in the banks of issue, and finally disappeared in paper money.

—Colbert denounced the unrestricted license to borrow, as a cause of ruin to the state; what would he have said of this formidable instrument of paper money, which was on the point of handing over abundant resources to the prodigality and rash enterprises of governments, by drawing to itself produced wealth, at the risk of destroying it by foolish expenses and by the squandering of a part of the public fortune, which was destined to disappear in smoke under the deceptive form of notes having a forced circulation and of assignats? Sophisms were not wanting to give a brilliant coloring to these disastrous operations. To procure for paper the value and efficacy of money was to make something out of nothing, and to have a share in divine power; wealth consisted in an abundance of money; thanks to paper, people were no longer tied to the precious metals, which would not increase at will, nor follow the commands of man, while paper money, the fruitful and docile agent of the supreme power, could be increased at will. The abbé Terrasson explains in a curious manner this phenomenon of financial optics. "A merchant's note," he says, "as it may be refused in trade, does not circulate like silver, and consequently soon returns to its source; its utterer finds himself obliged to pay, and deprived of the benefit of credit. This is not the case with the king: as every one is obliged to accept his note, and this note circulates as silver, he pays validly even with his promise." "Gold and silver," he adds, "are merely the signs that represent real wealth, that is, commodities. An écu is a note conceived in the following terms: any seller will give to its bearer, the commodity or merchandise which he may need up to the amount of three livres for as much of another kind of merchandise which has been given me; and the effigy of the prince takes the place of his signature. Now, what difference does it make whether this sign is of silver or of paper? Is it not cheaper to choose a material that costs nothing, and which one is not obliged to withdraw from trade, where it is employed as merchandise, which, in fine, is manufactured in the kingdom, and which does not render us necessarily dependent upon strangers and owners of mines, who eagerly take advantage of the seduction or éclat of gold and silver to cause the ruin of other nations; a material that can be increased according to his needs, without fear of ever exhausting the supply; finally, a material which no one will be tempted to use for any other purpose than for circulation? Paper has all these advantages which render it preferable to silver."

—We see that the pretended discoveries, pompously vaunted by the new social alchemists of our day, are but old rubbish, long since condemned by good sense and experience! Doctrines similar to those of the abbé Terrasson inspired Law's system, and led to an emission of 2,696,400,000 livres of irredeemable notes, absorbed by a disgraceful bankruptcy, at an epoch when the value of each piece of money was, we must bear in mind, much greater, and the needs of circulation much less, than to-day; these doctrines, allied with other errors in her coinage system, gave birth to the 45,000,000,000 of assignats in France. The attempt has been vainly made to palliate such a debauchery of credit, by saying that the assignats saved the revolution, just as it has been said that the reign of terror saved the republic. We protest against this view with all the energy of a conviction based upon a scrupulous study of facts. The able memoir communicated to the academy of moral and political sciences by Levasseur shows how the ruin brought about by the disordinate issue of assignats weakened France, and Michelet has eloquently said: "The reign of terror killed the republic by exciting in men's minds a feeling more powerful than that of fear, the feeling of pity!"

—A young ecclesiastical student, twenty-two years of age, who afterward became illustrious under the name of Turgot, completely annihilated the errors professed by the defenders of paper money in his admirable letter to the abbé de Cicé (Paris, April 7, 1749). It would be difficult to find more cogent logic enlisted in a better cause.

—Save a slight difference, arising from the cost of production, uncoined silver is on a par with coined silver, the money value being only a denomination. "It is as merchandise that silver is, not the sign, but the common measure of other kinds of merchandise, and this not by any arbitrary convention, based upon the splendor of this metal, but because, as it can be employed as merchandise
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under different forms, and has, by reason of this property, a salable value which is somewhat increased by its use as money, since it can, moreover, be reduced to the same title and divided exactly, its value is always known."

—After having clearly stated the true principle, Turgot points out the danger of the arbitrary multiplication of paper. "But," says the abbé Terrasson, "it is to the king's interest, in order to preserve his credit, to keep paper money within just bounds, and this interest of the prince is sufficient to establish confidence." What are these just bounds? and how shall they be determined? Gold and silver are distributed by their very circulation, according to the proportion of products, of industry, wealth and revenue which they procure, as well as of the expenses incurred. Paper money has no measure but deceptive approximations, which a natural allurement is wont to swell at the wish of power. Instead of proportioning its issue to the unknown wants of the market, the latter made its issue conform to the insatiable requirements of the treasury; and ruin was the consequence. This is the common history of paper money wherever it has functioned as an attribute of public power, when the bank note ceased to be protected by a contract, and was transformed into an act of power.

—We must not confound the disastrous effects of inordinate emissions with the temporary privilege accorded to a bank, authorizing it to suspend the redemption of its notes in specie. When care is taken to limit the amount of notes in circulation, it is possible to ward off the bad effects of such an act, especially when it is easy to foresee the end of them, and when the prudent conduct of the institution has acquired for it great solidity.

—The act of 1797, which made compulsory the circulation of the notes of the bank of England, had but little effect, because they were not increased beyond the actual needs of the home circulation. The entire amount of notes in circulation in 1796 was £10,730,000; in 1797 it was but £9,675,000, and did not exceed £13,000,000 even in 1800. Their depreciation began when the needs of the treasury increased this sum. We must add, also, that the prodigious stir in industry about this time required more numerous instruments of exchange, while it at the same time furnished the sinews of war. Thanks to the inventions of Watt and Arkwright, the English mechanics spun gold, so to speak, and furnished material for the successive loans called for by the treasury, which reached colossal proportions. The bank of England facilitated these loans by discounting the notes of the exchequer, but the circulation of the notes never reached such proportions as to be a source of uneasiness; it never exceeded £20,000,000, except in 1810, and the maximum point reached was £28,000,000, before the resumption of specie payments in 1822. Still, even thus restricted, the prolongation of compulsory circulation was the cause of considerable losses, first by the rise in the price of gold, and then by the painful transition from a depreciated currency to the re-establishment of metallic money. The bank of England, does not, therefore, furnish any argument in favor of the inconsiderate issue of paper money; and it suffices to recall how comparatively moderate it was in its conduct, without, however, escaping the danger of the depreciation of fiduciary paper, to induce us to abandon rash designs of a similar character.

—There is much more reason not to cite the example of the bank of France in 1848, in defense of paper money. Every one knows what good services the good standing of this great establishment, the safety of its operations and the care it had always taken to maintain its specie reserve, enabled it to render to the government and to industry during this direful period, in spite of the terrible shock caused by the revolution of February. The compulsory circulation of its notes was in a measure only nominal: public administrations, the manufacturers and the merchants received the specie they needed. The confidence which the bank enjoyed attracted deposits to it. Although it had absorbed the departmental banks, and realized the grand idea of unity of issue, it was restricted at first to a circulation of 452,000,000 francs in notes; this figure was increased to 525,000,000 on Dec. 22, 1849, when its reserve was firmly re-established; its notes exchanged at par, and even at a small premium; and, in reality, it was the specie that had compulsory circulation, as the demand for notes exceeded the supply. The resumption of specie payments was urgently demanded by the bank itself, and prescribed by the decree of Aug. 6, 1850, without causing any trouble.

—Thus we see what is gained by not being carried away by chimerical facilities, and multiplying notes as Austria and Russia did, when the wants of circulation did not require it; this multiplication must necessarily lead to the instability of the measure of values, and to a variable lowering of the representative sign in all business transactions. We shall soon tell how France, in the face of apparently increasing financial necessities, in great part escaped this danger; for everything here is a question of proportion. The state which goes beyond this delicate measure tolerates or is guilty of an abuse, and is wanting in the performance of the high mission of power; instead of maintaining order, guaranteeing security, and maintaining the public faith, it becomes itself an instrument of sad disturbance, and at the same time aims a blow at moral law and the interests of production. From the moment that money loses its character of a solid pledge of business transactions, or that, instead of avoiding the variations of value, it suffers their effect, confidence disappears, operations extending over a long period are stopped, credit, the mainspring of industry, is destroyed, and circulation ceases. Paper money destroys the type, or, as Lord Liverpool styled it, the sovereign archetype of value, the precious metals. The bank note ceases to be their reflection and representative sign: the danger rapidly increases, if, instead of remaining an instrument
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of commerce, and of being backed by the discount on merchandise, it is handed over at the arbitrary will of the state, which transforms it into a mere resource of the treasury. It then becomes almost impossible to avoid a fatal declivity; an excessive emission leads to bankruptcy, for the state always issues more notes than the needs of circulation require, and, in proportion as the law of depreciation manifests itself, it hastens the catastrophe by the necessity of employing more notes to meet the same expenses.

—The loss which the country suffers is far from being confined to the diminution in price of the mass of fiduciary signs; it is increased by the unnatural amount of business transactions, rendered so by a fictitious value. The money of a nation never forms but a small portion of its wealth, and the depreciation of paper exercises a direful influence upon all products, which are henceforth distributed in a false proportion. All the relations of the sovereign power with citizens and of citizens with one another, are changed by it; contracts are violated; injustice triumphs, and the public fortune declines as a result of the ruin of individuals.

—How deplorable soever the system of paper money appears to us, we do not wish to exaggerate anything; it is not impossible to escape the dangers which it seems to provoke, but to do so we must renounce the idea of seeing in it too rich a mine, and of demanding of it more help than it can render. By confining it to well-defined limits, by scrupulously preventing it from exceeding a fraction of the receipts and expenses of the state, the government may find in paper money, if accepted by all the public treasuries, the means of effecting a real loan without interest. But this can never be but a limited resource, and as it may lead to dire consequences, it would be better to renounce it from the moment there appears a possibility of these consequences. Many of the small German states have treasury notes, which circulate as money, because there are but very few of them. In 1873, with a budget of 1,000,000,000 francs, Prussia had not 60,000,000 of Tresorscheine; the duchy of Baden reached a larger proportion, 3,000,000 florins of paper money to a budget of 19,000,000 florins. It is only in microscopic and needy states that the relative proportion is still further increased; but the amounts are small. Saxe-Meiningen had, in 1873, a budget of 2,000,000 florins and 356,000 florins of paper money. Saxe-Altenburg had 400,000 thalers of paper money when the treasury receipts reached only 874,192 thalers, and there were 950,000 thalers (more than $600,000) of this irredeemable paper in Anhalt alone. These modest figures seem insignificant by the side of the 3,000,000,000 of paper money of the Russian empire, which would like to appear less majestic in this respect. If France, at the close of a disastrous war, was compelled to carry such an amount of paper, she did it only by maintaining a larger specie reserve in the presence of wealth treble the amount, and of a trade four times that amount. She endeavored, besides, to resume her normal condition by a prompt redemption of the state's indebtedness to the bank of France.

—The two distinctive characteristics of paper money are, that it is not redeemable in coin, and that, instead of having public confidence for its limit, it is imposed by authority, by means of forced circulation and the usurpation of the power of discharging debts. Bad as an instrument of commercial credit, it becomes disastrous as an instrument of public authority, unless it be lessened to such an extent as to render only secondary services. As soon as the attempt is made to use it upon a very large scale, it leads to an abyss.

—Never more than in these later times have we seen numerous states applying the dread remedy of paper money upon a great scale. The United States at the close of the war of secession, Italy after gaining her independence, and France when defeated by Prussia, have put themselves side by side with Russia and Austria in the use of this dangerous expedient. This affords us a great lesson, for all these states were or are merely endeavoring to escape from a false situation, whose inconveniences they all appreciate. The old illusions have disappeared: men no longer extol paper money; they no longer see in it a source of wealth; they appreciate better the elements which constitute productive power; they know how often an apparent economy is transformed into losses of various kinds, whose amount far surpasses the pretended benefit.

—If we sum up the total amount of paper money issued by the five powers mentioned, we will find, after deducting the amount of the specie reserve, that it amounted, in 1873, to $250,000,000,000. This was not one-seventieth part of the accumulated wealth of these states; as a pretended increase of productive power, therefore, paper money is a feeble benefit, entirely counterbalanced by the trouble it causes in circulation. The measure is already full, and can not be increased. The common efforts of all civilized nations are directed toward a reduction of the amount of paper money. But should not this necessary reduction of notes render those more circumspect who, acknowledging only gold as a medium of circulation, would run the risk of destroying the necessary equilibrium between business and money? (See MONEY AND ITS SUBSTITUTES.)

L. WOLOWSKI.

PARAGUAY (Republic of).

PARAGUAY (Republic of). Paraguay was one of the numerous provinces included in the vice-royalty of Buenos Ayres, which comprised the Spanish-American possessions connected by the Rio de la Plata with the Atlantic ocean. Like all the other Spanish colonies of Central and South America, Paraguay, when the cry of independence resounded throughout the American continent, succeeded in shaking off the yoke of the mother country, almost without a struggle, in 1810. But this province, which had already had its separate history in the past, a strange history and one entirely different from that of any
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other state, also contributed to the revolution which it had just accomplished, features which contrasted in a most striking manner with those of the other republics of La Plata.

—A few words here about the past. Paraguay, like the greater part of South America, was conquered to the crown of Spain, about the middle of the sixteenth century, by the hardy adventurers who, on the heels of Columbus, Cortez, Pizarro and Americus Vespucius, had cast themselves upon the new world, as ardent in their endeavors to despoil and enslave the aborigines as to convert them to the Christian faith. But in these remote countries, in which relations with Europe were almost impossible, the religious element soon prevailed over the political element, and the powerful company of Jesus which, since 1588, had through its missions planted the germs of refinement of manners and community life in these countries, obtained, in 1611, the privilege of governing Paraguay, under the suzerainty paramount of Spain.

—This government of the Jesuits established a pure theocracy in Paraguay, and maintained it with firmness, moderation and success during more than a century and a half, until the year 1767, when the society was expelled under the ministry of the count of Aranda. We can not here undertake to defend theocratic government, as both experience and reason demonstrate that human societies develop only under the influence of ideas of progress and liberty. We must note, also, that individual action, under the enervating régime of their vast conventual organization, no longer had the energetic stimulus of the feeling of ownership or property. But, when we consider the savage state of the inhabitants, it is impossible to deny that the Jesuits worked a marvelous transformation during their prolonged domination. If they concerned themselves more about the souls than the intellects of the aborigines, if their religion itself was a sort of paganism, tending to divert the natives because external in form in almost everything, they nevertheless bent these large and lazy children to the law of labor; and it is a demonstrated fact that the agriculture of Paraguay was checked after the expulsion of the company, and that even to this day it has not regained its former development, so that numerous localities, formerly well cultivated, are now abandoned. What is specially worthy of note is, that the rule of the Jesuits left a strong impression upon their minds, and that respect for authority remained the heritage of the country when the declaration of its independence handed it over to the experiment of a republican form of government. Nor were its efforts in this direction long continued: while everywhere else, throughout Spanish America, the people sought their way amid endless commotions, the people of Paraguay found theirs without hesitation and without groping; or rather, as immutably disciplined disciples of the Jesuit fathers, the people of Paraguay allowed themselves to be led without a shadow of resistance, by the energetic man who took their destiny in his hands. With the aid of the patriots of Buenos Ayres, Paraguay had overthrown the Spanish domination in the month of May, 1811: a junta had been established, and the victorious insurgents gave the highest place to Doctor Francia, who had taken no part in these events, but whom they regarded as the only Paraguayan capable of directing public affairs.

—In fact, from the moment that Doctor Francia was accorded a place in the new republic, he became everything: he first presided over the junta, then when a congress had established, at his suggestion, a government with two consuls, he filled one of the consular chairs, which had been called by the names of Cæsar and Pompey. Soon after, in 1814, the chair of Pompey, which had been only an embarrassment, was removed from the hall of congress, and Francia was named dictator for three years. Finally, the assembly conferred perpetual dictatorship upon him. Thus was the republic of Paraguay governed until the year 1840, when the dictator, weighed down with years, but ever feared, respected and obeyed as a god, was called from the throne and from the world.

—Absolute power was not exercised during so many years without falling into excesses. Francia, who had obtained supreme power at the age when passions are extinct, and who had immediately renounced all taste for gaming and sensual indulgence, hitherto the sole object of his life, abandoned himself to the sombre passion of old men, vengeance. He was sure of the submission of the people, but he wished to inspire fear, and he cared little whether he was hated or not. Those who had known him best, those who, in the beginning of his career, had helped to bring him forward, and whose jealousy had been excited by his new greatness, were the more especial objects of his pitiless spite. Under pretext of conspiracy, his old friends were imprisoned, judged by him alone, and executed. His dictatorship was a veritable reign of terror, and even to-day scarcely any trace can be found of the bloody executions he prescribed, as his written orders were returned to him after the execution, and by him immediately destroyed.

—Francia had, we may add, no regard whatever for human life, and this is the odious feature of his dictatorship; but his cruelty, his strange and fantastic humor, did not constitute the entire man, for whose continued power there would be no pretext, even in Paraguay, if he were not possessed of certain striking public virtues and of extraordinary governing qualities. The old dictator, with a preconceived system, devoted himself to what he believed to be the interest of Paraguay. Much better informed than any of his countrymen, he took everything into his own hands, always knowing the end which he wished to attain. Without ministers, without counselors, without confidants, he had with him only a secretary of the lowest rank, called actuario, who recorded his wishes, without pretending to influence them. He was ever disinterested: he said that the state stood
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more in need of money than he did, and of the 9,000 piastres assigned him by congress he never took more than 3,000 piastres a year. Such being his own practice, Francia impressed upon his whole administration rules of austere probity which singularly contributed to render his name popular.

—The dictator's policy was very simple; it was the policy of isolation. He aimed at maintaining Paraguay free not only from all contact with Europe, but also and especially from all intercourse with the ancient provinces of the vice-royalty of Buenos Ayres. There was never a shadow of indecision in his conduct, in this regard. Despite all the attempts of the governments that succeeded one another in the Argentine Republic, he never would admit that the autonomy of Paraguay could be broken, and in the last years of his life he even refused to examine the pressing demands addressed to him on this subject by Rosas, who was then at the height of his power. This had been somewhat the policy of the Jesuits; but Francia, who was thoroughly imbued with the anti-Catholic ideas of the eighteenth century, had not the religious motive of his predecessors. He wished to defend himself against liberty, which, in fact, did not work wonders in the Argentine countries, where Rosas had inflicted upon the people a dictatorship more severe than that of Francia himself, without giving, in exchange, the profound peace which can scarcely be said to have been interrupted, during the thirty years of Francia's rule, by a few aggressions of the savages from the desert.

—The death of Francia, which occurred in 1840, left the work which he had created without a guide. But after him, in default of statesmen, there remained the people whom he had trained to obedience, and who, faithful to their tranquil habits, passed over the period of transition to a new government without any trouble. They remembered what had been done in 1810; a general constituent assembly was convoked, elected by universal suffrage, and composed of five hundred members. This assembly appointed two consuls to govern the republic, Don Carlos-Antonio Lopez, a wealthy landed proprietor, and Don Mariano-Roque Alonzo, commander-in-chief of the army, who had been called by the voice of the public to provide for the most urgent wants of the government, and for the convocation of the representatives. The powers given to the consuls were to expire at the end of three years; and superiority on the one hand, and deference on the other, were so firmly established, that the three years elapsed without the least collision. But in 1844, when the assembly met again, it happened, as in the time of Francia's administration, that one of the consuls absorbed the other. Antonio Lopez was named president for ten years.

—The presidency of Paraguay became a real dynasty. When his constitutional term had expired, Lopez wished to be succeeded by his son, Don Francisco-Salano Lopez, and the assembly very graciously lent itself to this notion. But Gen. Lopez declined the honor tendered him, and his refusal does not seem to have displeased the head of his family, who willingly allowed himself to be renominated. It was not until 1862, on the death of Antonio Lopez, that the congress finally called Don Francisco-Salano Lopez to the decennial presidency.

—The elevation to power of Don Carlos-Antonio Lopez had been of immense benefit to Paraguay, and his son, still more completely freed from the traditions of Francia, and more inclined to the civilization of Europe, which he had visited, promised to continue the benefit. Don Antonio had governed Paraguay with mildness, and his patriarchal justice was full of mercy. Of the foreign policy of Francia he had retained only his determined resolution to maintain the autonomy of Paraguay, and to preserve it against the attempted invasion of its turbulent neighbors. He would not at any cost return into the distracted pale of the old vice-royalty of Buenos Ayres, and exchange the order and prosperity which his fellow-countrymen enjoyed for the deceptive unity of the Argentine provinces, a unity fruitful only in endless civil strife. But what was his personal work, and remains his title to honor, is the intention he formed, and afterward accomplished, of demolishing the Chinese wall which Francia, after the example of the Jesuits, his predecessors, had built around Paraguay. He above all wished to open communications with Europe. Owing to the persistence with which he pressed the conclusion of treaties of navigation and commerce with France, England, the United States, Brazil, etc., the isolation of Paraguay was in part done away with in 1860. This isolation was due in great part to the very situation of Paraguay. It is a vast plateau of arable land, watered by mighty rivers and numerous streams, but elevated above all the other countries of South America, situated in the very centre of the continent, far from any sea, and has communication with the other states only by means of its two rivers, the Parana and the Paraguay. The fixed purpose of the two Lopezes was to secure the freedom of navigation of the two rivers. The second Lopez established it by a decree. He also had a railroad constructed. Very much inclined to the economic progress of Europe, whence he had returned decorated (an immense prestige in America), he had resolved to make of Paraguay a state of large resources, and economic works, after the fashion of France in 1852 and the succeeding years, whose political constitution he pretty closely copied. He acted as the ruler of a country of 901,640 square kilometres and 1,337,000 inhabitants. The revenues were increased to 12,450,000 francs, derived principally from the sale of the herb maté (Paraguay tea), from the domains (over 8,000,000 francs), and customs duties. Paraguay had no public debt, and its 4,500,000 francs of paper money were secured by a specie reserve of an equal amount. Its imports amounted to over 8,000,000 francs, and its exports to 7,000,000.

—Lopez's position as head of the state was a unique one; less than 7,000
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square kilometres of this vast country belonged to private parties; the remainder was state domain administered by Lopez. All the farmers were therefore his tenants, so to speak; the manufactures which they produced were his; Paraguay was but an immense farm in his hands. Its means, however, were not in keeping with the greatness of its natural resources: these fertile plains were worked with the spade; the farmers who used the plow were few. There was no industry but that which was improvised for the necessities of war. The navigation of the Paraguay was at the mercy of Buenos Ayres, which commands the mouth of the river. The hostility of the Argentine Republic was surpassed by that of Brazil, which, for the ownership of vague and contested territory, drew the other states bordering on the Parana into a coalition which overcame Lopez.

—Brazil demanded the left bank of the Paraguay (1864), and the Argentine Republic the right bank, which is possessed by Uruguay. It was against Uruguay that the coalition was first formed. The two greedy governments, refusing the intervention of Italy, put in power, in opposition to the moderate (blanco) government which regularly governs Uruguay, the revolutionary (colorado) party, which invaded the republic. Lopez, who was friendly to the blancos, felt himself threatened, and while refusing an alliance with Uruguay, he protested against the invasion of the Brazilian squadron in lower Paraguay, Nov. 17, 1864. He declared war against Brazil, and invaded the Brazilian territory. Flores, the colorado, who, with his Indians and half-breeds, and the assistance of the allies, took possession of Montevideo, joined the coalition. This struggle of one against three, of a great military farm against three nations provided with every industrial and maritime resource, moved Europe. Lopez was on good terms with the governments of Europe, and also with the United States; but American intervention was rejected by Brazil. This empire, which evidently dragged the two republics of La Plata into the struggle against their will, pushed matters to extremes. Lopez, five times conquered, five times repaired his losses by a general conscription, comprising women and children. He was finally captured and killed. There are few examples in history of a war so desperate, and so complete a ruin (1865). The population of Paraguay fell from 1,330,000 to 500,000, and the revenues from 13,000,000 francs to 2,000,000.

—It seems that the conquerors wished partially to justify their ordinary, and in this case plausible, pretense of making war only in the interest of civilization and liberty; for, after having stipulated for the territorial acquisitions which they had long demanded, they left the Paraguayans free to manage their own home government. By the treaty of Suret, concluded with Brazil and the Argentine Republic May 1, 1865, and ratified June 20, 1870, Paraguay was allowed to retain only the territory situated between the Paraguay and Parana rivers. Hence the area of the republic is at present only about 172,500 square kilometres. A constitution, proclaimed Nov. 25, 1875, provided for a president for four years, and a legislative congress composed of a senate and a chamber of representatives. It is substantially a reproduction of the constitution of the United States.

—Examples of such efforts as Paraguay now made to repair so complete a catastrophe are as rare as the catastrophe itself. The government of Paraguay proposed the sale of the immense national property, which comprised almost its entire territory. But these lands had to be hypothecated to guarantee a loan of £25,000,000, which was effected in England. In 1862 there was no public debt: in 1870 it amounted, besides the English loan, to 1,180,000,000 francs. Disorganization was such that the government had lost the titles to its property; a special commission had to be appointed to enforce the rights of the state. The instruments of production and the products themselves were everywhere damaged, when they were not destroyed. The railroad had to be supplied anew with rolling stock, workshops and stations. They had to rebuild public edifices, reestablish tribunals, issue paper money, take measures for the representation of Paraguay at the international exposition of Cordova, and to encourage immigration. Slavery was abolished (1871), the standing army reduced, and foreigners admitted to the enjoyment of all the rights of natives, but not to high political and administrative functions.17

PARASITES

PARASITES, Social. The parasite is one who lives at the expense of other men. The number of parasites is so great, and their place in this world so considerable, that we can not speak of the general economy of societies without concerning ourselves with them. No human being can live unless he has become exclusive master, that is to say, proprietor, of some portion of matter, be it but the piece of bread or of fruit which he is on the point of eating, or of the clothing which covers him. Some men live by the honest acquisition and accumulation of property, or by the just conservation of property previously acquired; these constitute the useful and active part of the human race. Others live on the resources of their neighbors; but it is none the less necessary that they should obtain the proprietorship of the things indispensable to their subsistence. A man may live by the use and consumption of the things or the product of the things which he has previously obtained by occupation, or which have been acquired, preserved or accumulated by virtue of the right of inheritance. We call individuals thus provided, proprietors, capitalists. The usage of speech reserves these names to persons who possess more material objects than are needed to satisfy the immediate wants of life. It is not customary, though he really is one, to call a proprietor the unfortunate man who possesses merely his clothing or his food for the day. A man may own nothing, either in capital producing an income or in stocks of provisions or other property, or he may possess only an insufficient quantity of these, and yet live upon his own resources. Within each one of us there is a powerful instrument of acquisition capable of furnishing material objects for our enjoyment. This inner most personal force, superior if not to all, at least to the usual and probable, risks of chance, is labor; in other words, the development of our powers of activity. Through this force we are enabled to render useful service to ourselves and others; and we acquire with certainty our share of property by the exchange of services, and accidentally by occupation. When a man lives neither by his own labor nor capital, a term in which, for greater convenience, we include all property previously acquired actually laid by, he must live by the labor or capital of others. Every man belongs then, necessarily, to one of these classes: capitalists, workmen, parasites. We are wrong in speaking of three classes: in truth, what are called classes here are only three attributes, three aspects of humanity. Two of these qualities, or all three of them, are often united in the same person. When we range men in these three classes, we take principally into consideration which of the three qualities is predominant in each of them.

—Mirabeau, in the discussion on the tithes in France, uttered the following words, which provoked the murmurs of the assembly. "It is time to renounce the prejudices of a proud ignorance which disdains the words wages and wage-workers. I know of but three ways of existing in society: a man
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must be a beggar, a thief or a wage-receiver Proprietors themselves are merely the first among wage-receivers; what we commonly call his property is nothing but the price which society pays him for the distribution which he is intrusted with making to other individuals, in return for his consumption and his expenses. Proprietors are the agents and stewards of the social body." The following day the abbé Duplaquet, on resigning from a priory, said: "I commit myself to the justice of the nation, considering, whatever M. de Mirabeau may have said on the subject, that I am too old to earn my wages, too honest to steal, and that the services which I have rendered should excuse me from begging." This witty repartee of the abbé was misleading; the right to the continuation of his wages was already earned, for the reward for past services is one of the elements of honest wages. The assembly, therefore, did wrong to receive it with murmurs, and to take offense at the term wage-receivers, which its great orator, obeying the luminous boldness of his good sense, tried to free from an unmerited reproach. Mirabeau's classification approached the truth, but did not reach it; proprietors are not wage workers; beggars and thieves constitute the principal branches of parasites, but do not include them all. Mirabeau was right in saying, with the physiocrates, that, being the agents and stewards of the social body, proprietors distributed wages for their consumption and their expenses: the inaccuracy consisted in pretending that they received social wages for that distribution. This was to confound the origin of its acquisition with the use of the thing, and to take account only of the service rendered by property, and not of its right over the thing. Owners of property gain the right to wages only in so far as to the character of proprietor is joined the character of workman, which, it is true, is usually added and in varying proportions, but which corresponds to a different order of relations. Owners, masters of their property, use it to suit themselves, in their own interest, at their own risk; the utility accruing indirectly to society from this use is the only service inherent in their quality as owners, and calls for no reward. It is in this use itself that they find the pay for this service. When society guarantees them the peaceable, permanent possession and the free enjoyment of their property, it does not pay them wages; it fulfills its own duty by causing the rights of owners to be respected; they it is who, by paying their taxes and bearing other public burdens, pay society for the service it renders them by guarding and guaranteeing their property. They distribute wages only because these wages bring them a profit by means of the values in things or services, of which wages are the representation, and the thing given in exchange for. The social utility of property is the consequence of its right, but neither its basis nor its measure. To lift the respect due to property to its true height, it is necessary to go to the length of saying that even if property remained idle, unproductive or badly used, it would still be sacred for the same reason and in the same degree as if employed in useful consumption and productive expenditure. Very distinct in theory, the quality of the proprietor and that of the wage-earner are linked together in the concrete realities of life by numerous points of contact, and are frequently found united in the same individual. Every workman possesses in his own person an immaterial capital, which consists in his capacity for labor. It is composed of his natural activity, his theoretical instruction, his practical skill; the direction which his moral development imparts to his powers must also be included as of great importance. Even if we confine ourselves to the consideration of material objects which may become property, it is not necessary, in order to find workmen capitalists, to consider only great manufacturers, etc., operating on a large stock previously accumulated. The artisan who has become owner of his tools and furniture is a capitalist, though on a modest scale; for he possesses articles which enable him to live, and things which he can use without destroying, and which will continue to be ulterior instruments of gain to him. In proportion as his property increases, as his tools become more numerous or better, as his stock of provisions accumulates for future consumption, his character as capitalist becomes more evident.

—There are capitalists who live only on their capital or on their income; but they are in the minority. The majority employ a certain amount of paid labor in giving life to, fructifying and increasing their property. Of all the sophisms used to pervert the understanding of the public sentiment, one of the falsest and most productive of danger is that which, exalting labor at the expense of property, endeavors to range capitalists among parasites so far as that part of their fortune not produced by actual labor is concerned. The full and peaceful enjoyment of property, accompanied by its essential character of indefinite transmissibility, would be the wisest of calculations and the most useful of combinations, even if it were only the result of human convention. But property is more than this it is a right, and, to consider it only in its relations with labor, it is the right of labor itself. Take away the certainty of being recognized as the master of goods legitimately acquired, and you break the spring of the activity which acquires them; deprive the father of a family of the assurance of transmitting the property acquired or preserved for his children, and you have destroyed the family spirit, and with it saving, temperance, providence, resignation, and plans for the future. Man is born for labor; but he craves repose, leisure, and the serene and disinterested culture of the mind. To stigmatize in theory, or disturb in practice, the past of which capitalists are the depositaries, would be the death of the present and the future. Labor, which is future property, has confidence in its forces only through the stability of property, which is, mainly,
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past labor.

—The parasite uses his neighbor's goods, that is, his property or his labor, without giving in return anything or any service. But it does not follow because an object was acquired parasitically, that it was illegitimately obtained. Ownership of things originates in several legitimate ways. Its first source is in the right of occupation; by virtue of which a vacant thing is appropriated by the person who first takes it. This origin excludes all idea of a parasitic acquisition, since it relates only to things to which no other person had acquired a right. Things already occupied can only be acquired by transmission. Transmission is legitimately effected in three different ways. One is inheritance, which, considering as a unit the natural association of relationship or affection, transfers the property of a deceased person to his heirs, by title of the civil continuation of his person. The heir is not a parasite, since he acquires in virtue of his own right, which is the complement and consequence of the full and entire right of his parent. Another way is exchange, through which property is acquired for an equivalent furnished in things or in services. Thanks to exchange, each man need owe to himself alone the means of living and owning property, and thus obtain independence and dignity from his own free acts. The third legitimate way of transmission is the way of gift. This is the only source of existence regularly open to parasite life. Outside of these four modes of acquisition, morality and law recognize no other. Robbery, rapine, cheating, extortion, confiscation, war, every act which takes another's goods by fraud or violence, should be ranked as a crime or misdemeanor. There are some distinctions to be made on the subject of confiscation and war, which may be legitimate by way of exception, but which are then resolved into forms of exchange, and as a reparation for damage caused.

—Parasites live irregularly, by misdemeanors, or regularly by gift. With regard to parasites of the first order, Mirabeau was right when he called them robbers; it is for the penal laws to settle with them. These parasites are found in every station of life, in all degrees of the social scale, and even among the wealthy. To live by confiscation, to grow rich by unjust privileges, to receive pay for work which is never done, for a place which is never filled, to break a contract or one's word, to appropriate by violence, by cunning, by credit or by power, the goods, the work, the liberty, the rights of others, is to take the place of the lowest of parasites without any exhibition of shame.

—Society, in its relations with this corrupt and corrupting class of men, has duties of various kinds to fulfill. The first is to punish them; the second is to see that the punishments inflicted furnish security and serve as an example to the rest of the people; the third is to turn the penalties into an effort to reform the guilty, and above all to prevent their becoming, through the fault of institutions, a new cause of individual corruption and social danger. With these public duties is connected everything which relates to penal legislation, to the administration of repressive justice, to the management of prisons, to banishment, and to the penitentiary system. Too mild punishment disarms and discourages society. Excessive severity destroys the sentiment of justice, and causes it to degenerate by putting vengeance in its place. It invites impunity. The cause of the greatest moral disturbance is to be found in a cowardly complaisance toward wealthy parasites, whom their social position raises up to serve as an example, which position they have not been able to protect from the baseness of living at the expense of others. To surround illy acquired wealth with honor, to lavish unmerited bounties, to urge to cupidity, to arouse vicious inclinations, as happens, for instance, when the official character is soiled by connecting it with lotteries and gaming establishments, is to widen the breach for the invasion of parasites. The want of enlightenment and mistakes of calculation lead society to such a result, when, even without immoral intent, it combines or manages its institutions in such a manner as to take from the common fund, made up of the contributions of all, the means to support monopolies, privileges or franchises, which return nothing to compensate therefor, monopolies created in certain kinds of labor, services, commerce, industry. If we examine the protective system closely, it will not be difficult to perceive that its principal wrong is that it establishes and develops artificially parasitic privileges, covering them, often in good faith, and without understanding their real effect, with the cloak of general utility. It is not given to human laws to remedy everything; and, whatever be their wisdom, a part of the race will always live on the spoils taken from the other part. But we are justified in wishing that laws and governments should have a sound understanding of what is just, and should unite to the sagacity which points out evil, the probity to hunt it down, and the constancy to stop its progress as far as lies in the power of man.

—The parasites who live on gifts, and whose existence thus depends on a regular title, even in the case when irregular causes have given birth to this title, are a curious and difficult subject of study. All the questions of pauperism belong to this subject, but they are not the only ones that belong to it. Gift, a legitimate source of acquisition, is an indispensable element in the harmony of society. It is a result of the completeness of the power of the proprietor, who is free to deprive himself of his property gratuitously, without receiving anything in return. To receive gratuitously the services or the property of another is a parasitic act, the character of which is determined by the circumstances which accompany it, and which is, in itself, neither good nor bad. The name parasite is given to persons who, by habit and these parasitic acts, live altogether or principally by donation. The moral disfavor which custom attaches to the acceptance of the services or property of
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others without giving an equivalent therefor, arises from an honorable susceptibility, and answers to a respectable instinct of dignity, but is not always just. This acceptance, if confined strictly to its economic meaning, should be morally neutral, in spite of the idea of inferiority and dependence which it implies; it is right in some cases, but wrong in others, to make such gratuitous acceptance an expression of contempt. What is beyond all controversy, is, that we must not apply the harsh term beggar to all those who live by gift. The idea of mendicancy is connected with the idea of a permanent condition of solicitation based on the allegation of entire helplessness to procure the necessaries of life in any other way. The man is not a mendicant who receives the donation without asking for it, especially he is not one who receives it as a consequence of affection existing between him and the donor, or as the satisfaction of an obligation connecting the donor with him. Beggary is confounded with rapine and robbery when it exacts assistance instead of requesting it.

—Among those who receive without giving, and who live on the substance of others without furnishing anything of their own in return, must be reckoned nearly all the human race during the period of childhood. Our first years are passed in absolute impotence as far as productive labor is concerned. This time is devoted to physical, intellectual and moral development, destined, no doubt, to create in those who reach the age of maturity an immaterial capital of force and activity, but which may never have this result. The age of productive labor is reached at different periods by different persons. Ordinarily it commences too early in the poor families of artisans and agricultural laborers, who hasten to employ their children in a lucrative occupation, while the more provident or well-to-do families are not so hasty to consume the present at the expense of the future. The quality of capitalist belongs to children only in exceptional cases. The number of those who are born with a fortune of their own and who can be supported and reared by means of their own property, is extremely small, even in the wealthy class. If we consider children in individual isolation only, they must be called parasites, for they live solely on the resources of others given to them; but they figure in society as members of the collective being called the family, of which they form an integral part by right; and the family itself would become a parasite, if by impotence or bad will, it should allow the cost of their subsistence to fall on others. The child lives at the expense of the family without giving any actual return, unless in affection, in happiness, in morality, in hopes, precious values indeed, but which can not be measured. Later, the child should make a return for the assistance and services rendered it in advance. Its right to existence rests on a two-fold foundation: on the duties which the instincts of our nature engrave on our hearts and dictate to the positive law; and on the continued mutuality of obligations, which, contracted to some, are paid to others, converting our debts to our fathers and mothers into credits to our children. The civil law obliges parents, fathers and children, the ascending and descending lines, to support each other reciprocally. The natural law extends beyond this circle of family duties.

—The family is not the only collective being on which the responsibility rests of supporting its members. The same duty is imposed, in different measures and proportions, on numberless associations into which men are collected. There is a class of associations, such as the societies of mutual aid, whose capital, formed by means of individual contributions, is intended for those of its members who are in distress or who reach a certain age, or a certain time of service. The assistance demanded in this case is not a donation, it is a credit, a regular and foreseen employment of a common saving collected for this purpose. The party who receives aid here is in no way a parasite, not even with regard to those particular bodies, so long as he receives his share only after having fulfilled the conditions of his contract. He becomes a parasite with reference to the association, if, without having furnished his due, he receives from its bounty, instead of from his own contribution, the assistance which is given him. But the individual thus assisted is not a parasite on the rest of society, since he lives on resources which the rest of society did not contribute to provide for him. A county undertakes the support of its poor. These are parasites with reference to it, but not to the rest of the country, which is not called on to do anything for them. The same must be said of individuals assisted by private charity; which, by taking them in charge, relieves society in general to that extent. It is to be remarked, however, that, as the resources of private charity are limited, the parasites who exhaust it prevent it from being extended to others who need it as much or more than they; and in this manner they contribute to increase the number of the needy. It is a fundamental truth, too little recognized, that, different from other duties, which have corresponding rights, there is no right which corresponds to the duty of charity. The rich man must relieve the poor without the poor having any right as against the rich. Religion has admirable doctrines on this subject which public law might profit by: while it teaches charity to some, it commands gratitude and resignation to others. Private charity is a debt of conscience and love, and not a debt by right; it does not obey precise rules, and is not governed by the calculations of human prudence; it feels that its most urgent cares, its most bountiful assistance, its most affectionate consolations, should be given to unmerited suffering, but it desires to assist even those who have deserved their misfortune by their faults. Thus, to extend its benevolent duties, it is enough for charity to say that each man ought to feel his weakness to be such, that he should not arm himself arrogantly
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against indulgence. Charity has its eyes fixed, not on what it gives, but on what it has itself received. All men would be charitable if they would remember the large number of services which each one receives from his neighbors, no matter how brilliant his actual situation may be. There is not an individual who does not draw abundantly from this large capital of the universal domain transmitted and increased from generation to generation, and who does not take much more from it than he can ever return to it. We owe too much to others to be authorized to bargain our assistance to those whom it is possible for us to aid.

—Public charity is governed by narrower and more worldly rules than private charity. Consequently, men correctly cease to call it charity, and give it the more modern name of public assistance. Charity, which is love, strips itself to give to others. When the state gives and assists, it strips itself of nothing; its action is limited to distributing in a certain fashion the contributions which it levies on its citizens. Not every gift is charity; the assistance distributed by the state is only a branch of the public administration. The only parasites at the expense of the state should be the poor who can not be properly cared for by their families, associations or private charity. To live in a purely gratuitous manner at the expense of the state when not compelled to accept the gifts by which it supports the needy and unfortunate, is to belong to the worst class of parasites, to that class of people who are able not to be parasites, a perverse class, a public pest, whose close relationship with robbers we have previously pointed out, and to which we need not return. It only remains for us to speak of parasites who are really poor people. State donations, like private gifts, are essentially one-sided, in this sense, that the moral duty imposed on the donor does not suppose any right in the recipient. Where credit begins, donation ceases. It is the desire of humanity that human beings should not be left to perish of distress; it is the dictate of prudence that a mass of men excited to disorder and crime by the spur of want should not be left to increase in the bosom of society; but the duty of the state to be humane and prudent creates no right to demand its assistance. The destructive sophism which converts want into credit has been revived in our time under the names of the right to existence, the right to labor, the right to assistance. It has been frequently refuted in this cyclopædia. (See ATELIERS; CHARITY; COMMUNISM; LABOR, RIGHT TO.) The falsest sophisms are generally the exaggerations of a correct idea, or the improper generalization of a particular truth. The numerous varieties of the anti-social sophisms which parade the name of socialism, place their point of support on the undeniable theory of reparation of wrongs, but they draw strange conclusions from this. By attacking not only society, but also the law of sociality, the sacred foundation of society, they affect to see in the conditions of every-day life, such as it has been organized by the universal consent of nations, the abasement and ruin of individuals, instead of finding in it a fruitful and efficient cause of their prosperity and development. A proposition which remains true in spite of the crookedness imparted to it by these sophisms is this, that when suffering is born of the sins of society or governments and the vice of institutions and of laws, it is no longer a question of humanity, decency and wisdom, but of a strict obligation of the state to alleviate it. It is no longer a case of donation, but of credit. Society, being held to repair its own wrongs, is not obliged to correct those which individuals inflict on themselves, any more than those which they suffer from others or from undeserved misfortune. It would be to destroy the dignity, the liberty, the responsibility of individuals, to transfer to the social body the task belonging to each one of guarding, preserving and developing himself. What society owes its members, is, to protect and guarantee the free exercise of their rights with all its strength; its office is not to think, to will or to act for them. The more liberty a state insures to its citizens, the less attention it owes their interests, since it leaves these interests more completely to the management and responsibility of the citizens themselves; if it interferes in private life and exerts an influence in managing the property of individuals, its responsibility to individuals increases with every extension which it gives to its guardianship. For societies, as well as individuals, to do good, is a secondary duty; not to do wrong is the first. The wants of a wise administration counsel the state to assist the parasitic mass, but the obligations not to create parasites itself, an obligation a hundred times more serious and binding, is antecedent to this. It should not act like a surgeon who would first would the passers by, and then offer them his services. Society creates paupers, and consequently parasites, when it turns from the straight road of justice, and, changing the noble office of guaranteeing and protecting property into a tyranny, takes possession of property and labor, or injures them by its exactions: it creates paupers when it arrests or hampers the free exercise of moral, intellectual or physical activity, the natural expansion of labor, the legitimate acquisition or transmission of property; it also creates paupers when it offers a premium on vice, idleness and lack of courage, by too great a readiness to grant relief. Society, through the enormous power which it wields, feeds and increases the evil when it distributes imprudently what it believes to be its benefits. The moderation in public assistance commanded by prudence, rests also on another basis. The state, which can levy only on the services and the property of workmen and capitalists, should never forget that whatever it gives is necessarily taken from the goods of its citizens; generosity at the expense of others easily degenerates into spoliation.

—The assistance given to parasites is an expedient rather than a remedy. Social progress
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consists, not in maintaining and supporting a greater number of parasites, but in decreasing and eliminating the parasites in existence. The perversion of manners, the extinction or abasement of the moral sense, makes most parasites. A had book, a vicious sophism, an evil example, creates more misery than hail, fire or famine. If it is necessary, because they are men, to assist human beings who consume without producing and receive without giving, it is imperative to attempt their reformation and endeavor to make them acquire property through morality and labor. Next to the task of improving its institutions and its laws in order to free itself from participation in evil, society has no more important mission than to obtain good results from good laws by improving the morals of men. The amount of misery is enormous, and alarms the most civilized societies. The true problem would be to dry up or lessen the thousand impure channels through which it is formed and increased. Society should by law leave religion free to propagate its principles; it should open schools, make education and enlightenment general, honor letters, sciences and arts, elevate the moral sense, exalt disinterestedness, remunerate services rendered, give life to indolence, smooth obstacles, remove all obstructions of the market. Its firm and vigorous humanity should avoid, as far as possible, the degrading form of alms; it should without asperity, uniting prudence to kindness, never forget that severity is generally more merciful than weakness. The danger is great, when the instinct of natural dignity which finds unearned bread bitter, grows weak and loses its honorable sensitiveness. The loss of the feeling of responsibility in individuals toward themselves, in families and other collective bodies toward their members, throws into the ranks of parasites persons of equivocal morality who find it more convenient to receive aid than to work. In the train of idleness follows covetousness; then corruption, which, increasing more and more, impels all to live at the expense of all.

—The only efficacious and honorable means of combating the parasitic spirit, the last extremity of human abasement, and assisting pauperism, is a gradual increase of the freedom of labor and property. All other methods serve simply to conjure the necessities and dangers of to-day, without promising, but often preparing, a worse to-morrow. When workmen can display their activity in peace, when capitalists can with confidence accumulate and lay up their property, the products of which will enrich all, the class of parasites decreases and is quieted through the development of the other two classes. Just as workmen and capitalists prosper and suffer together, and as it would be to impel them to suicide and to mutual oppression, to arouse rivalry and envy between them, parasites should respect capitalists and laborers, not only on account of moral obligation and the command of positive law, but also from calculation of what is useful for themselves. Parasites in fact or in intention, the unfortunates who are, and the cowards who wish to be, parasites, would be, like the rest of society, ruined by the despoiling of those who labor and those who own property. Swarms of rivals, left behind, would be excited by the contagion of victory, and would rise up as enemies and destroyers of the success of the violence of a day. Ill gotten gains are not easily kept. A few days of dissipation would quickly throw back into misery those who had escaped from it by detestable means. Their momentary triumph, by removing further from them the capacity of suffering with dignity, would only redouble their incapacity for labor and their helplessness to acquire property honestly. The man accustomed to live only on others, destroys his most lasting resources, if he ruins those who alone are able to acquire and preserve. (See PAUPERISM.)

CH. RENOUARD.

PARDON.

PARDON. Pardon is the remission, granted by the sovereign or head of the state to a sentenced person, of the penalty imposed on him by the courts. Such penalty is sometimes replaced by a less severe one. This is what is called a commutation of sentence.

—Pardon, in contradistinction to amnesty, abolishes neither the offense nor the sentence.

—The utility of the right of pardon has been questioned by some publicists, as for instance, Beccaria, Bentham and even Rousseau, who have contested the necessity of its intervention. Beccaria desired to introduce clemency into the law, but not into the execution of its judgments. He thought that the moderation of penalties and the "perfection of the law" would render pardons superfluous. "The right to remit the penalty imposed on the culprit," he said, "is a tacit disapprobation of the laws." This inflexible rule, which attributes the same weight and measure to all acts of the same nature, although in the infinite variety of human affairs they differ considerably one from the other, and never have the same moral value, has been condemned by experience, which has rejected the system of the fixity of penalties. J. J. Rousseau, although less absolute than Beccaria, reached almost the same conclusions. "The right of pardon," says Rousseau, "or of exempting a culprit from the penalty declared by the law and pronounced by the judge, belongs only to one who is above the judge and the law, that is, to the sovereign; moreover, the right of the sovereign to exercise the pardoning power is not quite clear, and the cases in which that power should be exercised are very rare. In a well-governed state there are but few punishments, not because pardon is very frequent, but because there are few criminals; the multitude of crimes insures their impunity when the state is in a condition of decay. * * Frequent cases of pardon indicate that crimes will soon have no need of it."

—More recently than Rousseau's time clemency in the execution of penalties found new adversaries. Mr. Livingston, an American, opposed it in principle, and proposed at least to restrict its application to certain cases. "The
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pardoning power," said he, "should not be exercised except in cases in which the innocence of the prisoner is discovered after he has been condemned, or in case of his sincere and complete reformation." These few words give utterance to several errors: first, if a person condemned is found to be innocent after his condemnation, there can be no such thing as pardon; the judicial error should be corrected, and the sentence of condemnation annulled. Then, it is not correct to say that the reformation of the person condemned and his moral amendment should of themselves constitute a motive for the intervention of the pardoning power. Mr. Livingston, whom we have just cited, would, without doubt, have expressed himself differently had he borne political crimes and offenses in mind. We do not deny that repentance and the return to moral sentiments may, in the case of ordinary crimes, be made a condition of pardon. The thief and the murderer should not be allowed to re-enter society without giving it a pledge for their moral behavior. But political crimes and offenses have a special character: they do not manifest in their author the same degree of perversity as common crimes, and conscience does not express the same reprobation for them. This class of offenses, in most cases, constitutes just as serious a violation of a moral law as ordinary offenses, but not of the same law. Common crimes are crimes everywhere; political acts are crimes only in a variable and, in a sense, conditional manner. It might be said that circumstances make and unmake them. "The immorality of political offenses," says Guizot, "is neither as clear nor as immutable as that of ordinary crimes; it is always crossed or obscured by the vicissitudes of human affairs; it varies with the time, with events and with the rights and merits of power.

—Public conscience is subject to reaction in favor of persons condemned for political offenses; it can not be so subject in favor of persons condemned for ordinary crimes. Public conscience amnesties the former, it pardons the latter, but it never amnesties them, it forgives but does not forget them.

—How, then, can we subordinate the right of pardon in matters political to conditions of reformation and private morality, as has been proposed by Mr. Livingston? What makes repression necessary in cases of this kind is not the immorality and perversity of the person committing the offense, but political causes which must be subjected in their action to the general principles of justice and of right; the opportuneness, sometimes even the necessity, of pardon, depends on the same causes. Circumstances which change, occasions which pass away, passions which become abated, parties which are dissolved: all of these contribute toward diminishing the importance of a person condemned for a political offense." (Théorie du Code pénal, by MM. Chauveau et Faustin Hélie.)

—In politics, the pardon granted the culprit (who sometimes is but a vanquished adversary) produces the happiest effect in favor of the power granting it; it impresses the minds of the people with the spectacle of power and greatness, and at the same time disarms the parties. "Monarchs," says Montesquieu, "have so much to gain by clemency, they derive so much glory from it, that in almost every instance it is for them a piece of good fortune to have an opportunity to exercise clemency.

—How many examples are there, on the contrary, of powers pursued to death by the cry of blood uselessly spilt, and which have perished for not having pardoned in time!

—But when should we punish and when pardon?" Montesquieu proposed that question to himself, which it is not an easy task to solve. Clemency, says he, should not degenerate into weakness, nor should it bring the prince who exercises it into contempt. Clemency, it is true, may have its dangers, but neither is implacable severity without its dangers; the latter produces terror, which offers but an unsteady basis to power: Non diuturni timor magister officii, and provokes retaliation. If we can not help going to extremes it is better to sin by an excess of clemency. It is not certain that this is not the better policy, even as far as duration is concerned; and posterity, which admires the victor, gives its love to the indulgent.18

EMILE CHÉDIEU.

PARIS MONETARY CONFERENCE

PARIS MONETARY CONFERENCE. Under this title will be given a sketch of the three international monetary conferences held in the city of Paris in the years 1867, 1878 and 1881. Bimetallism in the abstract having been considered in the article on MONEY, that subject will be treated here only in the narrative form as it was presented in the discussions of the conferences.

—Conference of 1867. This conference was brought together on the invitation of the French government, which was moved thereto by the successful conclusion of the treaty of Dec. 23, 1865, between France, Belgium. Italy and Switzerland, constituting what is commonly known as the Latin monetary union. The letter of invitation transmitted by the French government inclosed a copy of this treaty, and suggested the holding of an international conference "to consider the question of uniformity of coinage and to seek for the basis of
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ulterior negotiations." The conference assembled June 17, under the presidency of Marquis de Moustier, minister of foreign affairs, the following named countries being represented: Austria, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Denmark, the United States, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and Würtemberg. The United States were represented by Mr. Samuel B. Ruggles of New York, and Great Britain by Mr. Thomas Graham and Mr. Rivers Wilson. The most eminent of the French representatives, as an economist and financier, was Mr. E. de Parieu. A committee was appointed to formulate the work of the conference.

—At the second session (June 19) the committee reported a "questionnaire" or series of interrogatories to be debated by the conference. These were twelve in number, all having relation to the possibility of establishing a universal monetary unit, either by adopting some existing unit or by making a new one approximating to existing units, and to the means of securing the practical adoption of the same. The conference voted unanimously against the adoption of an entirely new system, and in favor of "the mutual co-ordination of existing systems."

—At the third session a vote was taken on the question whether the standard of the proposed unit should be silver exclusively. It was decided in the negative unanimously. When this vote was taken, Mr. Feer-Herzog (Switzerland) noted it as a fact of much significance, that the representatives of Prussia and Sweden, countries having the silver standard, should have voted in effect in favor of the gold standard. The conference then voted unanimously (with the exception of The Netherlands) in favor of the single gold standard, "leaving each state the liberty to keep its silver standard temporarily."

—At the fourth session, on the motion of Baron de Hock (Austria), the conference voted that the advantage of internationality, which the proposed gold unit would have, would not be sufficient to keep the coins in circulation in states having the silver standard or the double standard, unless suitable measures should be adopted regarding the ratio between the two metals.

—At the fifth session (which was presided over by Prince Napoleon) the question, what unit should be adopted, came up for discussion. Mr. Rivers Wilson, on behalf of Great Britain, read a paper saying that his government had been glad to participate in the conference, regarding it as a means of enlightening public opinion on an important question, but could not hold out the expectation that it would abandon its own monetary unit or assimilate it to that of any continental system. The conference voted that an international coinage should consist of "types with a common denominator for weight, in gold coins of identical fineness," and that the fineness should be nine-tenths.

—At the sixth session the conference voted by thirteen to two in favor of the five-franc gold piece (equal to 96½ cents) as the common denominator. England and Sweden voted against this proposition; Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg and Belgium did not vote. It was voted also that gold coins with the common denominator of five francs should have legal circulation in the countries agreeing to the action of the conference, and that it would be expedient to coin gold pieces of the dimensions of twenty-five francs for international circulation.

—At the seventh session it was voted to refer the decisions of the conference to the several states for diplomatic action; that the answers of the several states should be transmitted to the French government, which should have power to reassemble the conference; and that it was desirable that the answers should be received before Feb. 15, 1868. The conference adjourned July 6, and was not reassembled.

—Conference of 1878. By the coinage revision act of Feb. 12, 1873, the gold dollar of twenty-five and eight-tenths grains nine-tenths fine was declared to be the unit of value in the United States, and the silver dollar was omitted from the list of coins authorized to be struck at the mint. By the act of Feb. 28, 1878, the silver dollar was restored to the list of coins and made full legal tender, and the secretary of the treasury was directed to purchase silver bullion and coin into such dollars not less than two million dollars' worth, and not more than four million dollars' worth per month. By the same act the president was directed to invite the governments of Europe "to join in a conference to adopt a common ratio between gold and silver for the purpose of establishing internationally the use of bi-metallic money and securing fixity of relative value between those metals." That portion of the act of 1873 which made the gold dollar the unit of value was not altered by the act of 1878.

—The conference assembled in Paris, Aug. 16. Delegates were appointed by Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland, and the United States. Mr. Mees (The Netherlands), Mr. Brock (Norway), Mr Feer Herzog (Switzerland), and Mr. Delyanni (Greece) had been members of the conference of 1867. The representatives of the United States were Reuben E. Fenton of New York. W. S. Groesbeck of Ohio, and Francis A. Walker of Connecticut, with S. Dana Horton as secretary, Mr. Horton being admitted to the conference as a member. Great Britain was represented by the Rt. Hon. Geo. J. Goschen, Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs, Sir Thos. L. Seccombe, and Mr. Wm. B. Gurdon. The most distinguished representative of France was Léon Say, minister of finance. Germany declined to send delegates. No action was taken at the first session beyond the election of Léon Say as president.

—At the second session Mr. Groesbeck, on behalf of the United States, offered two propositions for the consideration of the conference: 1, That it is not to be desired that silver be excluded from free coinage in Europe and the United States; 2d, That the use of both gold and silver as unlimited
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legal tender may be safely adopted by equalizing them at a ratio fixed by international agreement. Mr. Groesbeck said that that portion of the law of 1873, by which the silver dollar was made to disappear from the coinage, had been passed through inadvertence rather than intentionally, and that the United States, although desiring to restore silver to absolute equality with gold, had been compelled to limit the coinage of silver on account of the market value of the metals, and also by reason of the action of the Latin Union restricting the coinage of silver. Mr. Goschen and Mr. Gibbs inquired what was to be understood by the "inadvertence" of the act of 1873, and whether that act had been passed without debate. Mr. Groesbeck replied that "no newspaper or chamber of commerce" had considered or recommended the bill, and that several members of congress had confessed to him that they did not know at the time what they were doing. Mr. Feer-Herzog said that silver had disappeared from circulation in the United States long before the act of 1873 was passed, that there had been only eight millions of silver dollars coined from the beginning of the government down to that time, and that he had documents which he would lay on the table showing that the section of the law of 1873, by which the silver dollar was made to disappear from the coinage of the United States, was not passed by inadvertence, but voluntarily and with reflection, and determination to establish the single gold standard, which was in fact, and had for a long time been in practice, the standard of the country. Mr. Walker said that he himself, although at that time occupying a chair of political economy and lecturing on money, was not aware of what was being done, and he presumed the great majority of his fellow citizens were equally ignorant. The president (M. Say) said that Mr. Groesbeck's observation that the action of the Latin Union restricting the coinage of silver had been one of the motives impelling the United States to restrict it also, did not seem to be well founded. It seemed to him that this restriction was a compromise effected in congress by means of which a majority could be obtained. Mr. Horton replied that the Bland bill had been introduced in 1876, and that between that time and the passage of the silver remonetization act the subject had been discussed in all its phases, and that the action of the Latin Union had not been overlooked in the discussion. Mr. Pirmez (Belgium) said that the real question before the conference was whether the double standard should be made universal. His country could not do otherwise than reject such a proposition, whose immediate result would be to give enormous profits to speculators in the metals by withdrawing the one and substituting the other with every change of market value. Count Rusconi (Italy) thought the conference might pronounce upon the question of principle: "Is it possible to establish a fixed relation between gold and silver?" and then, if it be decided affirmatively, consider the means to establish such ratio. Mr. Broch (Norway) said that the double standard was a delusion and a misnomer; there was no such thing anywhere. Countries having the double standard in law had the gold standard in fact to-day and the silver standard to-morrow, but the double standard never. Silver, by reason of its weight and bulk, was not adapted to the wants of civilized countries and an active circulation. Gold alone responded to those needs. Silver was suited only to countries which were backward or stationary. Even if all European countries could be persuaded to adopt the double standard, the influence of India and China would produce incessant perturbations and fluctuations by alternate importations and exportations of silver. Mr. de Thoerner (Russia) believed that it was opposed to the very nature of things to endeavor to establish a fixed relation between the value of silver and that of gold. After some further discussion it was resolved, on the motion of Count Rusconi, that an invitation be extended to the German government, in the name of all the delegates, to send representatives to the conference.

—At the third session Mr. Goschen said that England could not adopt the double standard, but that she had, nevertheless, so large an interest in the question under discussion, through her Indian possessions, that she could not fail to give her aid and co-operation in any intelligent movement to arrest the fall of silver. If all states should resolve on the adoption of the gold standard, and if Italy. Austria and Russia should resume specie payments, would there be sufficient gold for the purpose without a tremendous crisis? It was better for the world at large that the two metals should continue in circulation than that one should be universally substituted for the other. The conference could not adopt the American proposition, but efforts might be made in other directions to check the downward course of silver by making some definite disposition of the German surplus, estimated at $75,000,000. If, for instance, this could be taken into the United States treasury in place of an equal amount of gold, it would no longer weigh on the market. Mr. von Hengenmuller (Austria-Hungary) said that Austria was attached to the principle of the double standard, and in theory must subscribe to the American proposition, but unfortunately the advantage of it depended upon its general adoption, which was not to be looked for. His government was, therefore, compelled to maintain an attitude of expectancy. If the conference were asked to formulate its opinions on the American proposition he should, however, vote in favor of it. Mr. Mees said that so long as England and Germany adhered to the single gold standard it would be impossible for Holland to adopt another system. There was not, at the present time, a single state in Europe where the coinage of silver was free, not even among those which have theoretically the silver standard or the double standard. The United States might, nevertheless, find powerful
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allies in Asia and South America, as well as among those countries of Europe which are still under the régime of paper money. The general demonetization of silver undertaken everywhere at once, would have the most fatal consequences. The president (M. Say) explained the monetary position of France. In closing her mint against silver, the government had no intention of moving toward the single gold standard. France had about twenty-five hundred million francs in silver, of which nine hundred millions were in the vaults of the bank. To demonetize such a mass and throw it on the market was inadmissible. But to hold the mint open to take a further indefinite quantity at the ratio of fifteen and one half to one, especially when it was known that Germany had fifteen or seventeen million pounds sterling in hand ready to sell, was impossible. Hence, the attitude of France was that of expectancy. France was waiting to get clearer ideas of the causes of the depreciation of silver, and to see what disposition was to be made of the German stock. She held herself in readiness to adopt the single gold standard or to revert to the double standard, according to circumstances. She could vote readily for the first clause of the American proposition, that it is not to be desired that silver be excluded from free coinage in Europe and the United States. She could vote also that silver already coined and holding the legal tender character ought to be maintained in that character, but could not acquiesce in the other clauses of the American proposition, although at some future time, when the atmosphere should be cleared, she might be able to do so. Mr. Delyanni said that the position of Greece was identical with that expressed by M. Say on behalf of France. Mr. Feer-Herzog was not able to coincide with other speakers in giving such prominence and gravity to the unsold stock of silver in the German treasury as a disturbing cause in the market. This stock was only equal to one year's supply from the mines, or to the demand from India last year. The commerce of India was the greatest factor in the silver market, the production of the mines the next greatest, while the German monetary reform could only be counted as the third in importance. He disclaimed for himself and other adherents of the single gold standard the thought of suppressing silver money. He merely desired that it should take its natural and proper place as the money of the less advanced portions of mankind, while gold should take its place as the money of a higher civilization. It was the persistent fall of silver, showing itself as a constant fact, which had led governments, even against their will, to adopt the single gold standard. Switzerland had given her delegates no authority to agree to the adoption of the ratio of sixteen to one, or any other ratio between silver and gold. Count Rusconi did not consider it impossible to establish a stable relation between silver and gold. Law alone, he said, makes money. If the uncoined metal was subject to variations of the market, the coined metal, having legal tender power, had a price which did not vary. It had the power of paying obligations which the uncoined metal did not possess. The metal might change in value, but the coin did not change. It had, actually and effectively, the value which was indicated by the imprint. Mr. Brock could not share in the opinions which had been expressed concerning the quantity of gold which would be required to enable those countries now under the paper régime to resume specie payments. In his opinion more silver would be required than gold; for those countries would not discard their note issues when they should resume, but the fractional notes would be retired and silver coin would take their place in the hands of the people. Norway and Sweden were on the gold basis, but scarcely any gold was seen. The circulation consisted of notes and silver. So it would be in Italy and Austria and the United States after resumption. Specie resumption in the United States would necessarily be in gold. The coinage of silver dollars under the limitations of the present law would do no harm for a long time. The dollars would circulate at par with gold so long as they were not in excess. But a time would come, especially if they should adopt unlimited coinage, when the two would not circulate at par with each other. The power of the United States, or of all the nations of Europe together, would not suffice for the struggle against the balance of international trade, or to change the terms of the balance. He agreed with the delegate from Switzerland that the greater or less demand for silver in India was the governing factor of the silver problem. In other words, it was the condition of trade between Europe and Asia that determined from time to time the relative values of silver and gold. Holding this opinion, he did not believe that the means proposed by the United States to secure fixity of value between the two metals would have the results which they expected from it, even if accepted by all Europe. Nevertheless, he had the most profound respect for the motives which led to the calling of this conference, and he believed that great good would result from the interchange of views, even if no resolution should be adopted.

—At the fourth session, the president said that the German government had replied, through Prince Hohenlohe, to the invitation to send delegates to the conference by expressing thanks for the invitation, and regretting its inability to accede to the wishes of the conference. Mr. Walker replied to the remarks of Mr. Feer Herzog at the previous session. Silver, he said, had not ceased to be money in Europe through natural causes, but by the action of man, by political action, by laws and decrees of governments suggested and urged by political economists of a certain school. The action of Germany in 1871, involving important changes in the policy of the Latin Union, was wholly gratuitous, not suggested by any commercial exigency. It was
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taken under bad advice, with little or no consideration as to the general effects upon the production of wealth which would be wrought by so great a diminution of the money supply of the world. Mr. Feer-Herzog had said that he expected and desired to see the world divided into gold countries and silver countries, the former civilized, the latter uncivilized. He (Mr. Walker) affirmed that "there are not more than three territorially extensive countries in the world which could possibly maintain a single gold standard upon true economic principles." A diminution of the money supply was one of the gravest evils that could menace mankind. Whether the money supply of Europe should be reduced by silver demonetization 40, 30 or only 20 per cent., the consequences would be most disastrous. "Suffocation, strangulation, are words hardly too strong to express the agony of the industrial body when embraced in the fatal coils of a contracting money supply." Against so great a wrong to civilization and to the hopes of mankind, the representatives of the United States were here to raise their earnest protest and warning. The interest of the United States in this question as a silver producing country, was utterly insignificant as compared with their interest in it as it stands related to trade and industry in general. Mr. Waern (Sweden), thought it right to reply to so much of Mr. Walker's speech as implied that only the richest nations would be able to obtain and keep gold sufficient for their needs under the single gold standard. Sweden was a country very inferior in wealth, and she had adopted the single gold standard in 1873, yet she had experienced no difficulty upon this score. She had found all the gold she needed as the basis of her fiduciary circulation, and she had had no difficulty in retaining it. Mr. Horton replied to Mr. Feer Herzog's historical citations, and especially to his statement that England, in adopting the single gold standard in the year 1816, had simply conformed the law to what had been the practice for nearly a century. The English gold standard law, said Mr. Horton, really dated from 1798. Much of the monetary confusion which England suffered between 1798 and 1821 was to be attributed to this unwise proceeding. Mr. Horton thought that the conference was diverging into collateral discussions, and that it would be better to adhere to the real question suggested by the United States government, viz.: Is it in the interest of nations to wage a monetary war, each seeking to get rid of a falling metal? or ought they to unite together to give to the monetary basis of business a stability which it does not now possess? If the conference should separate without answering this question it would have left only an interrogation point at the end of its labors. Mr. Baralis (Italy) urged that a sub-committee be appointed to consider and report upon the subject of an international coinage. The president thought it was better to pursue the discussion of the American propositions till a definite conclusion should be arrived at. Mr. Feer-Herzog, replying to Mr. Horton's statement of the real question before the conference, said that, if England were asked to establish a fixed ratio between the rupee and the sovereign, she would refuse to do so. If Holland were asked to do the same as between the gold florin and the silver florin, she would refuse to do so. And so it would be all around. It was politically impossible and commercially impossible to establish a fixed and permanent relation between the two metals. All governments together, with their united efforts, could not do it. Mr. Horton could not admit that it was a good answer to say that it was impossible to come to an agreement merely because this or that nation would not agree to it. The conference was inquiring whether the agreement ought to be made, whether it was for the interest of the nations that it should be made. Until 1873, the variations of supply and demand had not prevented silver from remaining comparatively steady for a long period. This was due to the bi-metallic system of France, which kept the two metals in equilibrium. By giving a wider basis to this system a still more complete stability would be obtained. Mr. Goschen said that, if Mr. Horton asked the conference to pronounce upon the utility of bi-metallism, irrespective of the possibility or impossibility of establishing it, he did not consider it necessary to give a categorical answer to a question thus hypothetically put. But if the practical question were put, he should not hesitate to affirm, as Mr. Feer Herzog had done, the entire and absolute impossibility of establishing a fixed ratio between the metals, and this for many reasons of a scientific and economic nature which he need not enter into in detail.

—At the fifth session the theoretical discussion of bi-metallism was continued by Mr Groesbeck, Mr. Pirmez and Mr. Horton.

—At the sixth session the president (M. Say) laid on the table a memorandum agreed upon by the European delegates as their collective answer to the American propositions. After thanking the government of the United States for calling the conference, the memorandum declares that the European delegates recognize, 1. that it is necessary to maintain in the world the monetary function of silver as well as of gold, but that the selection of one, of the other, or both simultaneously, should be governed by the special situation of each state or group of states; 2, that the question of the restriction of the coinage of silver should equally be left to the discretion of each state or group of states; 3, that the differences of opinion which have appeared exclude the discussion of the adoption of a common ratio between the two metals. The representatives of Italy dissented from the conclusions of the other European delegates.

—At the seventh session (Aug. 29), the representatives of the United States filed a paper expressing their thanks to the European states for accepting their invitation, but dissenting from that portion of the memorandum which refers the question of bi-metallism to the
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separate action of each state or group of states. After a vote of thanks to the president and secretaries, and the exchange of civilities, the conference adjourned.

—Conference of 1881. This conference was called in the month of January, 1881, by the governments of France and the United States, "to examine and adopt, for the purpose of submitting the same to the governments represented, a plan and a system for the establishment, by means of an international agreement, of the use of gold and silver as bi-metallic money according to a settled relative value between those metals." It met at Paris, April 19. Delegates were present from Austria-Hungary, Belgium, British India, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland and the United States. Mr. Brock (Norway), was the only delegate who had been a member of both the preceding conferences. Mr. Vrolik (The Netherlands) had been a member of the conference of 1867. Count von Kuefstein (Austria), Mr. Pirmez (Belgium), Count Rusconi (Italy), Mr. de Thoerner (Russia), and Mr. Horton (the United States), had been members of the conference of 1878. The other representatives of the United States were Wm, M. Evarts, of New York, ex-secretary of state, Allen G. Thurman of Ohio, and Timothy O. Howe of Wisconsin, ex-senators. At the first session Mr. Magnin, minister of finance of the French republic, was chosen president, and a committee of one from each state appointed to draft a "questionnaire," or list of questions to be discussed.

—At the second session (May 5) the questionnaire was presented by Mr. Vrolik, chairman of the committee, in substance as follows: Has the fall of silver been hurtful to commerce and to general prosperity? Is it desirable that the relative value of gold and silver should possess a high degree of stability? Is the fall of silver due to increased production, or to acts of legislation? If a large group of states should agree to the free coinage of gold and silver, of full legal tender, at a uniform ratio, would substantial, if not absolute, stability of relative value be obtained? If so, what measures should be taken to secure such result? The delegates of Germany then read a declaration on behalf of their government, giving the reasons which led them, in the year 1871, to adopt the gold standard. This reform was now so far advanced that they could not change their monetary system, but they were disposed to second the efforts of other powers which might desire to unite for the purpose of rehabilitating silver, by agreeing to abstain during a period of some years from all sales of silver, and during another period to sell only a limited quantity, so that the market should at no time be glutted thereby. Germany might even make other concessions short of changing her own monetary system. She might retire her gold pieces and treasury notes of five marks, leaving their places to be filled by silver. This would make room for 78,000,000 marks. Mr. Fremantle, the delegate of Great Britain, read a declaration of his government to the effect that they had decided in the first instance not to take part in this conference, understanding that the terms of the call issued by France and the United States committed the participating governments to the double standard. Having been subsequently assured that no committal was intended, and that entire liberty of action was reserved, they considered that they would be lacking in consideration toward friendly powers if they should persist in refusing to send a delegate. His instructions limited him to furnishing information concerning the laws and monetary system of England. They did not permit him to vote upon the proposition submitted. The delegates of British India and of Canada made similar declarations to that of Mr. Fremantle, except that the delegate of Canada was authorized to vote, reserving liberty of action for his government. The delegate of Denmark said that, as his government had no intention of abandoning the single gold standard, he was instructed to abstain from all discussion of means for establishing the double standard. The delegate of Portugal made a similar statement in behalf of his government. Any opinions which he might express in the debates should be understood as merely his private and personal views. The delegate of Russia said that his government reserved entire liberty of action and of opinion. If he should take part in the debates, it would be upon the same understanding as that announced by the delegate of Portugal. The delegate of Greece made a similar declaration. The delegates of Austria Hungary said that their position was the same that it had been in the conference of 1878. They had an ardent sympathy for all measures to restore silver to its former position, but they reserved for their government full liberty of action. The delegates of Sweden and Norway said that their government authorized them to take part in all discussions, reserving their right to deal with their own monetary system. The delegates of Switzerland were not authorized to take part in the discussions of the conference until its action should have been first reported to the federal council. Mr. Cernuschi (France) thought that the prospect of an agreement in favor of bi-metallism was encouraging. It was only necessary to secure the co-operation of England and Germany to insure success. England had indeed refused to join in a bi metallic union, but there was reason to believe that she might join at a later period. Germany had shown, through the declaration read to the conference, that she could not now change her course without great loss and inconvenience. He (Mr. Cernuschi) would suggest (but only on his personal responsibility) that the loss incurred by Germany in changing from the silver to the gold standard, estimated at ninety-six million marks, be reimbursed to her by the other nations which had bought her silver. These nations, he contended,
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had made a gain by purchasing the silver of Germany, equal to the loss which Germany had incurred in selling it—the silver being worth one to fifteen and one-half, if bi-metallism were put in force, whereas Germany had sold it at one to seventeen or one to eighteen. Mr. Brock (Norway) thought that bi-metallism was not only impracticable, but undesirable. The substitution of gold for silver in Europe and America was not an accident, but the natural, logical and necessary result of the progress of civilization. There was sufficient gold in the world to supply the wants of all the civilized races, including those now under the régime of paper money. So far from looking upon bi-metallism as a thing to be striven for, he thought it was something to be avoided. So far from seeing danger in the single gold standard, he could only see advantages in it. Mr. Moret Y. Prendergast (Spain) moved that the conference take into consideration, first, the important declarations of Germany, England, British India and Canada, in order to get at their true scope and value, and then to adjourn to a fixed date, in order to open negotiations with those governments if it were found that the declarations afforded a reasonable basis for negotiations. It was agreed to pass over this motion for the present, and to take it up at a later stage.

—At the third session Mr. Cernuschi, in furtherance of the suggestion made by him respecting the reimbursement of ninety-six million marks to Germany, asked for information from the several governments in reference to the amount of silver coined by them since 1874, and the prices at which it had been bought. Mr. Pierson (The Netherlands) called attention to the limping-standard countries (Etalon boiteux), meaning by this the countries where the coinage of gold is free and the coinage of silver is not free, but where silver coins of unlimited legal tender circulate side by side with gold. The Latin Union, Germany and Holland, were in this condition, a condition which could not last. The metallic stock of the banks must be all of equal goodness. Bank notes must be covered by coin having a real and not an artificial value. The danger of counterfeiting was very great when the legal tender value of silver coins was much above their metal value. The clandestine coinage of silver was a permanent menace in countries where the limping standard prevails. The demonetization of silver had not only brought trouble upon the limping standard countries, but upon the gold-standard countries, upon England and Germany as well as upon Holland. The fall of the value of the rupee had wrought confusion in the trade of England with India, and caused great losses to British merchants and manufacturers. The only remedy for these evils was international bi-metallism. Mr. Pirmez (Belgium) denied that the gold-standard countries were suffering by reason of the demonetization of silver. They had announced on the floor of the conference that they felt very well and that they did not desire any change. As to English trade with India, the English merchant merely added to the selling prices of his goods a sum sufficient to make good the decline in the value of the rupee. The Indian government had lost a certain percentage of its fixed receipts, by reason of the decline of silver, but British trade had not suffered, and the British government remained insensible to the adjurations of the bi-metallists; Germany was equally insensible. The sole result of universal bi-metallism would be the spreading over Europe of a large portion of the silver of Asia, and the sending to Asia of a corresponding amount of the gold of Europe. The production of silver would be stimulated by the artificial value conferred upon it, and the production of gold would be correspondingly checked. Thus a fresh depreciation of silver would be produced, this time irremediable. Gold would not be sold at fifteen and one-half for silver, because it would cost more to produce it. Gold would continue to circulate, but it would circulate at a premium, as it now does in Austria, Russia, and all the countries under the paper money system. All the governments in the world would be utterly powerless to decree the respective value of silver and gold.

—At the fourth session, Mr. Luzzatti (Italy) replied to the argument of Mr. Pirmez. He contended that there was a strong party in England in favor of bimetallism. He instanced the pamphlet of Mr. Gibbs, former governor of the bank of England, published with the approval of the present governor of the bank; also the remarkable work of Mr. Ernest Seyd; also the resolutions of the Liverpool chamber of commerce. As regards British India, he said that English trade with that country was injured by oscillations in the exchange, just as it is injured by oscillations in the paper money countries of Europe. These oscillations were uncertainties, and all uncertainty was prejudicial to the best interests of trade. Public opinion in Germany was likewise divided on the question, and Prince Bismarck seemed to have conceived doubts as to the value of the gold monometallic reform. There was really a dearth of gold in the world. This would be proved unmistakably when Italy, Austria and Russia should make the attempt to resume specie payments. Mr. Fremantle said that it must not be inferred from the pamphlet of Mr. Gibbs, that that gentleman, or the present governor of the bank of England, expressed the opinion of the bank of England, still less the public opinion of Great Britain. Mr. de Thoerner (Russia) said that gold was preferable to silver just as railways were preferable to roads and bridle paths, but it did not follow that roads and bridle paths should be discarded. For the purposes of a standard gold was certainly the best; for an instrument of exchange having an intrinsic value there was still room for the use of silver. Might it not be possible to treat silver in the light of a stock exchange security selling for what it was worth? If coined or stamped by governments in the form of ingots
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at its exact value in gold, it might be made to play an important part in the work of international exchange without danger to any interest. Count Rusconi (Italy) contended that money was not merchandise, but a creation of law; consequently the ratio of fifteen and one-half was just as good as the ratio of sixteen or twenty. Mr. Burkhardt Bischoff (Switzerland) contended that money was merchandise, and not the creation of law. All that the state could do was to give a certificate of its weight and fineness. This it effected by means of a stamp. When that stamp was affixed, the state had exhausted its powers. The double or alternative standard was unjust in that it allowed the debtor always to pay in the cheaper metal. The greatness of London as a centre of the world's exchanges was due in large part to the invariableness of the English standard. You could always know what a pound sterling was; you could never know with certainty what a franc was under the double standard régime, when that standard existed. Replying to Mr. Cernuschi's observation on the loss of ninety-six million marks incurred by Germany, he contended that this was a fallacious assumption. Instead of incurring a loss, Germany had really made a gain. She had sold her silver at rates considerably higher than the present market price. If she wished to repurchase it she could do so now at a profit. The proper way to deal with the great stocks of silver in the banks of the Latin Union was to melt them down into ingots, and issue silver certificates for them, of so many kilogrammes each, which might pass into the world's commerce at their value according to the weight represented by them. Mr. Cernuschi reiterated that Germany had lost ninety-six million marks by her monetary reform. This was testified to by the memorandum of the German government submitted to the conference. (This memorandum showed a loss of 96,481,136 marks, comparing the sales with the original cost of the silver.)

—During the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth sessions the theoretical discussion was continued by Mr. Horton, Mr. Howe and Mr. Evarts on the part of the United States, by Count von Kuefstein and Chevalier von Niebauer (Austria-Hungary), Mr. Cernuschi and M. de Normandie (France), Mr. Pierson and Mr. Vrolik (The Netherlands), and Mr. SeismitDoda (Italy), in favor of bi-metallism; and by Mr. Brock (Norway), Mr. Pirmez (Belgium), Mr. Forssell (Sweden), and Count San Miguel (Portugal), against it. Sir Louis Mallet, on behalf of the government of British India, made some important statements. He said that he was authorized to engage that India would continue to keep her mint open to the free coinage of silver for a certain definite period, provided and upon the condition that a certain number of the principal states of the world engage on their part to maintain within their territories during the same period, the free coinage of silver, with full legal tender faculty, in the proportion of fifteen and one-half of silver to one of gold. He would explain how the depreciation of silver affected the Indian government. The government of India had to pay £15,000,000 in gold in London annually. This was the interest on the Indian debt contracted in gold, the interest on railway and canal obligations, also pensions and annuities, and that portion of the military expenditure which relates to pay and commissariat. These expenses were fixed by contract, and could not be reduced. The loss resulting on these remittances by reason of the fall of silver was £2,000,000 per annum. The government could not increase its revenue materially, the land revenue in Bengal being fixed in perpetuity, and in other provinces for long periods. It would be impossible, without serious political danger, to propose new taxes for reasons which the mass of the people would not be able to understand. But this actual loss was not the worst part of it; it was the absolute uncertainty which hung over the future, and which prevented any accurate calculation of the resources of the government. Then, there was a loss in trade resulting from the uncertainty of the exchanges and a loss of 20 per cent. on the great quantity of silver hoarded by the natives. The great wish of the financial authorities of India had been to have a common monetary system with England. Silver being impossible as a common standard on account of the English system, the choice must be between bi-metallism and gold, and although the latter was at present too difficult, it was certain that if any opportunity should offer itself India would seize it and enter into the struggle for the sole metal left as a solid basis for an international currency. Mr. Moret Y. Prendergast suggested that England might second the undertaking of Germany in behalf of silver by keeping one-fourth of the bank reserves in that metal as authorized by Sir Robert Peel's act. Mr. Fremantle replied that his government would take into very serious consideration the views put forward by the conference, but he suggested that the proposals be put in as definite form as possible. Mr. Forssell (Sweden) said that it was vain to talk about the sufferings and groans of this country and of that country, of this great bank and of that great bank, for the want of bi-metallism, so long as England and Germany refused to be converted. Notwithstanding all that had been said about the growth of bi-metallic opinion in Germany, here was the imperial government absolutely inflexible in its adherence to the single gold standard. There was not one ray of hope in that quarter. England was equally unmoved. Her Indian interests were so far inferior to her general interests that there was not the smallest prospect of her entering into a bi-metallic union. It was said that £2,000,000 per year are lost in the Indian exchanges. That was an ascertained sum, but the loss to be sustained by entering into a bi-metallic union was an indefinite and unascertained sum. Was an exact amount of loss ever bartered for an indefinite amount of risk? Was the monetary supremacy of a country ever sold for two
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millions sterling? Bi-metallism would always fail of adoption in face of the disproportion between the comparatively slight ailings complained of and the perfectly enormous remedy proposed, and however skillfully those ailings might be added up, the amount would never be deemed sufficient to justify the remedy. Mr. Forssell suggested three additional topics of discussion to be added to the questionnaire, viz.: Has there been, in the last ten years, a fall of general prices which may be attributed to the demonetization of silver and to a dearth of gold? Is there reason to believe that the successive adoption of the single gold standard will lead to a contraction of the metallic and paper circulation sufficiently great to exhibit itself in a fall of general prices? Is there ground for taking legislative measures to economize the use of gold in view of the progressive adoption of the single gold standard? Mr. Moret Y. Prendergast renewed his motion that the conference adjourn from the 19th of May to the 30th of June, in order that delegates who desired to communicate with their governments and receive further instructions upon propositions formulated in the conference, might have the opportunity to do so. Lord Reay (British India) thought that the excellent speeches which had been heard would be valuable contributions to economic science, but when the conference should reassemble it would be necessary to take practical steps to come to an agreement. The habits of English statesmen tended to make them give attention to facts rather than theories. If it were sought to persuade the United Kingdom to adopt bi-metallism, gentlemen could not do better than practice what they preached. They should begin by adopting bi-metallism at home. It would be another glory for the bi-metallists to accept the slight burden of some inconveniences which, on their own showing, would be only temporary. France and the United States were strong enough financially to make the experiment of bi-metallism. Great Britain had not waited for other nations to join her in adopting free trade. If other nations should show their faith in what they professed by adopting bi-metallism, Great Britain would be the first to render them the homage which she had always paid to any work tending to draw closer the bonds which unite nations. Mr. Seismit-Doda (Italy) seconded the motion for adjournment to June 30. The motion was unanimously adopted. On motion of the delegates of India the conference requested the several governments to take the opinion of the chief banks of issue in each on "the monetary question." Mr. Pierson (The Netherlands) asked the delegates of the United States what measures that country would take, in the event of the adoption of bi-metallism, to require the banks to receive silver on the same footing as gold. In most European countries the obligation could be imposed on banks of issue of buying gold and silver at a fixed price. What analogous steps could be taken in America? In short, what could she do in order that bi-metallism should exist there, not only in name, but in reality? He did not ask an immediate reply, but requested that a definite answer be made when the conference should reassemble.

—After an adjournment of six weeks, the conference held its ninth session, June 30.

—At the tenth session Mr. Horton regretted that he was, as yet, unable to present a response to the question which Mr. Pierson had put to the American delegates at the eighth session, or rather, to enter into the practical discussion to which the question would necessarily give rise. Mr. Thurman, reverting to the declarations of Germany and British India, which he read at length, said that these propositions required France and the United States to keep their mints open to the free coinage of silver of unlimited legal tender, this being the condition upon which Germany would agree to suspend her sales of silver for a definite period of time. While the United States would not reject any and every proposition which comes short of perfect bi-metallism, he was bound to say that a proposition which would expose them to alternate drains of gold and silver, according as the one or the other should command a premium in the market, would not be acceptable. The United States held a large stock of gold at the present time, and only a small stock of silver. They would hesitate to enter into an agreement the effect of which might be to lessen the amount of their gold. They would cheerfully become parties to a great bi-metallic union, but without such union would not surrender their power over their own coinage. He said this without underrating the importance of the German and English propositions, which were entitled to most respectful consideration, but which, in his judgment, fell far short of what the exigency required. Mr. Schraut (Germany) desired to combat the assertion that the sales of silver by his government had been the principal cause of the depression of that metal. The largest sales had been made in the year 1877, when the average price was one and three fourths pence higher than in 1876, and two pence higher than in 1878, showing that there were other and more powerful causes at work than the sales of silver by Germany. These causes, in his opinion, were the increase of production, and the increase of sales of India council drafts on the London market, which, taking the place of silver as remittances to India, lessened the demand for silver by an equal amount. The sale of such bills in London from 1871 to 1879 had exceeded the sales of silver by Germany more than three to one. Mr. Cernuschi contended that neither the more plentiful issue of bills by the Indian government nor the increased productiveness of silver mines had caused the depreciation of silver. If Germany had not adopted monometallism, France would have continued to coin the two metals freely: therefore the depreciation could not have taken place. Germany was the sole author of the silver crisis. Unless she had further declarations
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to make to the conference, she had as yet made no proposition which the United States and France could regard as a concession. Mr. Horton, while agreeing with Mr. Cernuschi as to the mistake which Germany had made in her monetary legislation, could not look upon her as the sole cause of the mischief. It dated further back. England began it, and the Paris conference of 1867, in which the United States took part, propagated it. The responsibility was not only on Germany, but on the civilized world. Baron von Thielmann (Germany) said that his government had nothing to add to the declaration presented at the first session of the conference. Mr. Fremantle said that at a later session of the conference he should present a fresh communication which he had just received from his government.

—At the eleventh session Mr. Dumas (France) made an extended argument in favor of bi-metallism. But if bi-metallism were for any reasons found to be impracticable, he would suggest the suppression of small gold coins, in order to give greater employment and steadiness of value to silver. Mr. Schraut concurred in this suggestion, and would add to it the suppression of bank notes of less denomination than twenty francs, and of the one and two dollar notes in the United States. Mr. Brock (Norway) said that all monometallists would concur in those suggestions, but he pointed out that the proposal of Mr. Dumas differed from that formulated by his colleague, Mr. Cernuschi. Mr. Cernuschi said that all such measures were only half measures; they only looked at small sides of the question, and could come to nothing. The internationality of silver at fifteen and onehalf was the point to be arrived at. Without that, nothing would be effected. "We must have all or nothing." Mr. Pierson presented a declaration of The Netherlands government saying that it would join in a bi-metallic union consisting of "all the great states of Europe and America," but could not engage to act thus if the system were confined to a more restricted area. It would, nevertheless, give serious attention to a project, if proposed at the conference, for establishing bi-metallism in an area comprising only several great states of Europe and America.

—At the twelfth session, Mr. Seismit-Doda presented a declaration of the government of Italy, saying that Italy would unite with the other states of the Latin Union and the United States of America "in resuming the limited coinage of silver" for a fixed term, provided Germany would agree during the same term (which should be at least five years) to suspend her sales of silver and replace her gold five-mark pieces and treasury notes with silver money, and provided the British government would increase the paying power of its silver crowns. Italy could in no case agree to the free and unlimited coinage of silver, unless England and Germany, or one of them, should unreservedly adhere to it. Mr. Fremantle presented a declaration from his government transmitting to the conference a communication from the bank of England. This communication was in effect an agreement on the part of the bank to receive silver and issue its (gold) notes therefor, to the extent of one-fourth of the gold held by the bank in its issue department, as authorized by its charter, provided that the mints of other countries would return to such rules as would insure the certainty of the conversion of gold into silver and of silver into gold. All its notes were payable in gold on demand, and it was required by law to receive all the gold offered to it in exchange for its notes. The president suggested that it would be well at the next session to consider the subject of adjournment. After such profound discussions it was not likely that any fresh light would be thrown upon the subject or additional eclat be given to the proceedings.

—At the thirteenth session (July 8) Mr. Evarts, in behalf of the delegates of France and the United States, and in the name of their respective governments, read a declaration stating, 1, that the depression and great fluctuations of the value of silver relatively to gold are injurious to commerce and to the general prosperity, and that the establishment of a fixed relation of value between them would produce most important benefits to the commerce of the world; 2, that a bi-metallic convention entered into between an important group of states for the free coinage of both silver and gold at a fixed ratio and with full legal tender faculty, would cause and maintain a stability in the relative value of the two metals suitable to the interests and requirements of commerce, 3, that any ratio now or lately in use by any commercial nation, if so adopted, could be maintained, but that the adoption of the ratio of fifteen and one-half to one would accomplish the object with less disturbance to existing monetary systems than any other ratio; 4, that a convention which should include England, France, Germany and the United States, with the concurrence of other states which this combination would assure, would be adequate to produce and maintain throughout the commercial world the relation between the two metals that such convention should adopt. The president said that a considerable number of delegates had expressed a desire to see the conference suspend its labors and adjourn to some later date. He suggested that this subject should be discussed. Mr. Forssell (Sweden) objected to this proposal as likely to lead to no practical result, while it would give a character of permanence to the conference which was not contemplated or authorized by the governments represented. It would be better to acknowledge at once that the projects of bi-metallism had collapsed, and to reaffirm the conclusions of the European delegates at the conference of 1878. Baron von Thielmann (Germany) asked that the reasons for adjourning the conference to a future date be formulated. After a recess of twenty minutes, the president read an explanatory resolution saying that, considering the speeches and observations of the delegates and the declarations of the
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several governments, there is ground for believing that an understanding may be established between the states which have taken part in the conference, but that it is expedient to suspend its meetings; that the monetary situation may, as to some states, call for governmental action, and that there is reason for giving an opportunity for diplomatic negotiations; therefore the conference adjourns to Wednesday, April 12, 1882. The resolution of adjournment was supported by Mr. De Normandie, Mr. Pirmez, Lord Reay, Count von Kuefstein and Mr. Brock. Mr. Forssell withdrew his objection. The resolution was adopted. On motion of Baron von Thielmann, the thanks of the conference were awarded to the president for the impartiality with which he had directed the proceedings. The conference then separated. It did not reassemble at the time fixed in the resolution of adjournment. There has been no public statement of the reasons why it was not reconvened.

HORACE WHITE.

PARLEY.

PARLEY. Two hostile armies often have need, even in the very midst of hostilities, of holding some correspondence with each other; for example, concerning the burial of the dead or the exchange of prisoners, or to propose a capitulation, to arrange for a suspension of arms, etc. This correspondence is effected by means of persons charged with the parley. In antiquity, at least in Greece and Rome, as well as in the middle ages, the persons sent to conduct the parley were always heralds, that is to say, men who held that office, not only for a special mission, but, in a way, permanently. Heralds fill a large place in Homer's poems, and many passages bear witness to the profound respect which was paid them in those remote times. For example, Talthybius and Eurybates, sent by Agamemnon to demand Briseis from Achilles, stopped overcome with terror at the door of the hero's tent; but the latter saluted them with these words: "Welcome, sacred heralds, ministers of gods and of men, you are innocent of the insult which I receive." For a long time the custom has been simply to send as parlementaires, officers accompanied by a drummer or a fifer, bearing a white flag.

—The inviolability of the parlementaire (person of truce), which appears to have been founded in antiquity upon the sacred and almost priestly character of the herald, rests to day upon international law. It is one of the oldest, most elementary and most essential regulations of this law. "Nomen legati," says Cicero, "ejusmodi esse debet, quod non modo inter speiorum jura, sed etiam inter hostium tela incolume versetur." Whoever attacks this principle, not only injures his adversary of the moment, but, to use Vattel's expression, "he injures the common security and safety of nations; he renders himself guilty of an atrocious crime against all peoples." It would not do to allow any departure from this sacred rule, even in civil war and toward the envoy of a party which is considered, rightly or wrongly, as rebellious; but there is always the right to refuse to admit a parlementaire, or person of truce, or to make his admission subject to such conditions as may seem proper; for example, that he shall be introduced into the lines with his eyes bandaged. Once admitted, the parlementaire should be protected, not only against all bad treatment, but against all insult.19 The parlementaire is not obliged spontaneously to close his eyes and ears during the course of his mission, and he has a perfect right to observe what he is allowed to see, sometimes with design, and to let his side take advantage of his observations. But if he should abuse his character to act as a spy and to concoct plots, he would expose himself to be ignominiously expelled; he might even, in certain cases, be deprived of his immunities, be detained as a prisoner, or even be put to death. The rigor of the law can even go to this extremity; but it is almost always not only more humane, but even more politic, not to have recourse to it, and to respect the character of the parlementaire, even in those who have abused it.

GASTON DE BOURGE.

PARLIAMENT

PARLIAMENT, The British, is the supreme legislature of the United Kingdom, and its history is, to a large extent, the history of the growth of political freedom. The attempts to trace the origin of this parliament to the Saxon period fail to connect the Wittena-gemote (meeting of wise men) with the representative principle, the hereditary character, or the royal summons, three characteristics of the present British parliament, which are deemed essentials of its constitution. It is by act of the crown alone that parliament can be assembled; only twice have the lords and commons met by their own authority—first, before the restoration of Charles II., and again at the revolution in 1688. Parliament is also prorogued (adjourned to a certain day), or dissolved by royal proclamation only.

—While the main constitution of parliament, as Blackstone says, was marked out in magna charta, A. D. 1215, when King John promised to summon the nobles, bishops, etc., to council, its actual first existence is commonly referred to the year 1265, when the writs of Simon de Montfort first summoned knights, citizens and burgesses to parliament. From that time parliament has consisted continuously of two houses, the lords and the commons, while the Saxon Wittena-gemote and later councils consisted of one chamber only. The creation of a house of commons elected by the people (or by the property element), may be said to have had its birth in that jealous care of the rights of property, so all-pervading
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in the British mind. The early kings had so abused the power of raising money, and the lords and bishops were so subservient to the royal will, that it became necessary to have the check of an elective body to assert and jealously maintain control over the taxing power. This control, claimed and exercised by the lower house of parliament for centuries, is so absolute that all bills, whether for the raising or the expenditure of money, must originate in the commons. The successive steps by which the important power over the public purse was transferred from the king to the commons, is a history of determination on the one hand and of stubborn resistance on the other, the English monarchs using every wile to secure supplies, which the parliament stubbornly refused except on condition of redress of grievances. The steady increase of the power of parliament during the reigns of the arbitrary house of Tudor, culminated during the Stuart dynasty in that struggle for supremacy between Charles I. and his parliament, which ended in the complete victory of the latter, the subversion of the monarchy, the abolition of the house of lords, and the establishment of the commonwealth.

—The duration of a parliament, outside of the seven years' limitation embodied in the act of 1715, is dependent upon the policy and measures of the ministry commanding a majority in the lower house. Practically, the average life of a parliament in the present century has been less than four years; the shortest one having lasted only four and one-half months (in 1807), and the longest a little over six years. The "appeal to the country," caused by the resignation of ministers who fail to command a majority, is made through writs of election. The last general election was in 1880, returning 338 liberals, 239 conservatives, and 60 home rulers. Members are chosen by what is regarded in England as nearly universal suffrage. There are, however, but 3,181,701 actual voters (in 1883) out of the population of 35,246,633, or about one in every eleven inhabitants: while in France and in the United States, where manhood suffrage is really universal, the proportion of voters to the population is one in every four or five inhabitants. The reform act of 1867-8 was a large extension of the franchise, giving it to all householders in boroughs (cities and towns), and to occupants of lands or houses bringing £12 rent or upward in counties, or in the country. This leaves the large class of agricultural and other laborers unrepresented. Since 1872 parliamentary elections are by secret ballot. (See BALLOT.)

—The omnipotence of parliament is regarded as the great feature in British polity. "The power and jurisdiction of parliament, "says Coke, "is so transcendent and absolute that it can not be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds." It wields not only the whole legislative power, but, for nearly two hundred years past, the executive power as well. In theory, the queen appoints the ministers or heads of administrative departments; in practice, these heads can be no other than the representatives of the will of the house of commons for the time being. What is called the government of England embraces not only the cabinet, but from forty to fifty political heads of departments, who quit their places with every change of administration. These changes, as we have seen, occurring every four years on an average, are effected by the majority in the house of commons, and this in its turn is dependent upon qualified suffrage. The powers of parliament are theoretically divided between three co-ordinate branches—the crown, the peers, and the commons—for the sovereign is, by the constitution, a part of parliament, having to be present in person or by proxy, and every law requiring the royal assent to its passage. The veto power, still lodged in the crown, has not been exercised since 1707, or for nearly two centuries. The house of lords, which has in theory equal law-making powers with the commons, can really do little but register the edicts of the latter. Although there are some measures of policy, such as the right of Catholics and Jews to sit in parliament, the extension of the suffrage, and the reduction or abolition of taxes or prescriptive privilege, upon which the stubborn opposition of the lords has for years stood in the path of reform, that reform has always sooner or later been carried. The political history of England is one long testimony to the weakness of precedent and prerogative when standing in opposition to the power of an enlightened public opinion.

—It may appear something like a paradox to assert that the powers of the popular branch of parliament are even greater now than in the days of Cromwell, when both the throne and the house of peers were abolished, and all sovereignty was swallowed up in a parliament of one chamber. Yet it is apparent that, with the single exception of the judicial power, which is still reserved to the house of lords, the commons of England, through their legislation and through their cabinet, wield a far more comprehensive authority than did the long parliament under the lord protector. The very constitution of the kingdom, that unwritten yet all-controlling governmental power, is nothing but the net result of the long series of parliamentary assertions and statutes, down to the latest embodiment of administrative power in the cabinet, which is defined by Bagehot as "a committee of the legislative body, selected to be the executive body."

—The organization of parliament is attended with great formality. The lord chancellor announces to the house of commons (previously summoned by the gentleman usher of the black rod to attend in the house of lords) that as soon as the members of both houses shall be sworn, her majesty will declare the causes of her calling this parliament; and further requests them to choose their speaker, who must be presented in the house of lords the day after, for the royal approbation. This being done, the speaker formally claims, on behalf of the commons, "all their ancient and undoubted rights
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and privileges." These being graciously confirmed, the commons, with the speaker, withdraw to their own chamber: then follows the taking of the oaths, and an address in answer to the speech from the throne.

—The queen's speech is delivered in the house of lords by herself in person, or by the lord chancellor, reading it in her presence, or by commissioners whom she appoints (and this is called opening parliament by commission). Before this, neither house can proceed with any business. The lord high chancellor presides as speaker of the house of lords. The presence of forty members or upward is required in the commons to constitute a quorum (the whole number of members in 1882 being 652). In the house of lords, which consists of 516 members, business may proceed with only three peers present. The parliament is obliged to meet at least as often as once a year. Customarily, the annual sessions of parliament begin early in February, and end some time in August: but this depends upon the public business, the ministry, and the concurrence of the two houses, so that parliament not unfrequently has a special session in November, or else does not rise until September, long after the close of the London "season." The opening of the daily session (formerly at 10 o'clock, and later at 12 M.) is now fixed at 4 P. M.—except morning sittings for private business, or toward the close of a session, in which cases the house resumes at the hour of 6 P. M.—the sittings often continuing far into the night. Both houses are opened with a fixed ceremony. At ten minutes to four, two gentlemen in court suits of black, steel buckles and swords, accompanied by a third, carrying a huge golden mace upon his shoulder, precede the speaker, who is dressed in a full-bottomed wig and robes of black silk, and who enters the house followed by a train-bearer, chaplain and secretary, to the cry of "Way for Mr. Speaker! Hats off for Mr. Speaker!" Then all persons must be uncovered, except only the members of the house of commons, whose peculiar privilege it is to wear their hats, a right usually exercised except when speaking. The chaplain reads prayers; the strangers' and reporters' galleries are then opened; the members present are counted. If after four o'clock there are not forty present, the house is adjourned till the next day. At half past four public business begins (half an hour being devoted to private business and petitions), after which the leading members of the government are all found in their places to answer any questions put by members of the house, of which one day's notice has been given. The house of lords usually meets at 5 P. M., but frequently sits as a court of appeal during the day, when it is open to the public like other judicial tribunals. At other times admission to the strangers' gallery is had only through a peer's order. In the house of lords the bishops always sit together, and the members of the administration occupy a front bench on the right of the woolsack (speaker's chair). The peers who vote with the government occupy the benches on the same side of the house; the peers in opposition are ranged on opposite benches. In the commons no particular places are allotted to members; but the front bench on the speaker's right is occupied by the members of the administration, while the leading members of the opposition usually take the front bench on the other side of the speaker's chair. The mass of members sit somewhat promiscuously, though approximately divided into supporters of the government, occupying benches on the right of the chair, and members of the opposition party on the left. The members of parliament in both houses serve without salary. Members elected to the house of commons serve as such until the next general election for a new parliament.

—It was formerly illegal to publish any of the proceedings or debates in parliament; and history records a long series of exclusions, punishments for contempt, and disgraceful persecutions against writers and printers who had presumed to make the people acquainted with what was said and done in parliament. At length, however, all restrictions were removed, and the daily press contains pretty full reports. Besides this, effected by private enterprise, "Hansard's Debates" are a full report (though in the third person) of the speeches made in both houses, taken in short-hand, and paid for, though not published, by the government. The journals of the house of lords have been printed officially ever since 1509, and those of the commons since 1547, in great folio volumes, with numerous indexes.

—The restrictions as to who may be elected members of the house of commons have been gradually removed, and since 1870 any subject over twenty-one years of age (even a naturalized alien) is eligible to election to parliament, except clergymen, contractors, judges, peers, bankrupts and office-holders. In several instances members elect below the legal age have been permitted to sit. Curiously enough, dissenting clergymen may be members of the commons, while those of the church of England, the established religion, are excluded, although bishops sit in the house of lords. The houses of parliament do not adjourn on occasion of the death or funeral of members of the body, nor are there any mortuary eulogies on such occasions.

—Although members of parliament serve without salary, the expenses of their election are frequently very heavy. The honor or reputation incident to a seat in parliament, as well as the influence which it enables a man of talent to wield, counts for much. It is not uncommon in vigorously contested elections to have from £1,000 to £5,000 expended in the numerous appliances for political meetings, printing and publishing, lights, brass bands, decorated hustings, and other devices to rouse and to keep up popular enthusiasm. Bribery, also, was formerly a too common channel for expenditure, but since the abolition of the rotten boroughs, the stringent anti-bribery laws, and the adoption of the secret ballot, the control of votes by purchase has been
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greatly diminished.

—Members of the commons have not the right to resign their places. To accomplish this object one must ask to be appointed "steward of the Chiltern Hundreds," an old and nominal office, without any functions, which is given to any member who applies for it. By this pleasant fiction a member can get out of parliament without violating the law which requires him to serve out the term for which he is elected.

—If the sovereign dies during a recess of parliament, it must convene immediately; and if it has been dissolved, it may resume its powers for a period of six months. All bills affecting the rights or privileges of the peerage must be offered in the house of lords, and can only be amended by the commons. All motions proposed in the house of commons are required to have a second: but this rule is not enforced in the house of lords. In neither house of parliament is any journal read of the previous day's proceedings.

—In the progress of business the ministers have the precedence in bringing forward motions of every kind—In taking a vote in the house of lords the members vote in the order of their rank, the lords voting in the affirmative answering "Content," and those opposed. "Not content." Each peer might vote by proxy for two absentees until 1868, when the practice was discontinued by a standing order. In the house of commons the members vote. "Aye" or "No," instead of "Content" or "Not content." When the vote is counted the ayes pass into a lobby on the right, and the noes into one on the left, in each room is a secretary, who checks off the names of members on a printed list, aided by two tellers appointed by the speaker. The tellers report the figures of the vote to the speaker, who announces it in open house.

—The speaker of the house of commons is precluded from participating in debate on legislative business: but in the lords the presiding officer, if a member of the body, may leave the chair and speak in his character of a peer. On the other hand, he has no casting vote; if the lords are evenly divided, the question is lost. But if the house of commons is tied, it becomes the duty of the speaker to give the casting vote, which determines the question one way or the other.

—The following table exhibits the duration of each parliament since the accession of Henry VIII. in 1509:

See GREAT BRITAIN. HOUSE OF COMMONS, HOUSE OF LORDS, PARLIAMENTARY LAW.

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. Cobbett (W). Parliamentary History of England, 1606-1803, 36 vols; Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3 series, 1803-83, 343 vols.; Journals of the House of Commons, 1547-1883, 138 vols.: Journals of the House of Lords, 1509-1883. 115 vols.: Standing Orders of the House of Commons, 1882: Standing Orders of House of Lords, 1876; Parliamentary Reports, Accounts, and Papers, 1812-83, about 5,000 folio vols.; May (T. E). Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 8th ed., 1879; Hallam (H.), Constitutional History of England, new ed., 3 vols., 1872; May (T. E.). Constitutional History of England since the accession of George III., 1760 to 1870, 5th ed., 3 vols., 1871; Hatsell (J.), Precedents and Proceedings in the House of Commons. 4 vols., 1818; Townsend (W. C.), History of the House of Commons, 1688-1832, 2 vols., 1843; Todd (A.). On Parliamentary Government in England, 2 vols., 1867, Grey (Earl), Parliamentary Government, 1867; Cooke (G. W.), History of Party, 3 vols., 1840; Dod (C. R). Parliamentary Companion, 1833-83; Bisset (A.), History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England, 2 vols., 1877.

A. R. SPOFFORD.

PARLIAMENTARY LAW.

PARLIAMENTARY LAW. This term is commonly used to designate the formal rules, and precedents having the force of rules, which govern the proceedings of legislative bodies. In a larger sense parliamentary law is held to regulate the course of business in all deliberative assemblies, public meetings, societies, conventions, and voluntary organizations of every description. In countries where the principle of representative government is firmly established, nothing can be more important than a clearly defined, well-established, and firmly-adhered-to system of conducting legislative business in such manner as to preserve at once the equality and independence of the representatives and the rights of the people. It is also most important that the public business should proceed in an established order, and with as little interruption and delay from controversy upon side issues as possible. Yet the endless and oft-renewed
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discussions in congress and legislatures upon points of parliamentary order, or upon the proper way to proceed with the business in hand, attest at once the confusion of mind of the average legislator, and the indefiniteness of the parliamentary law itself. So far from constituting a systematic code, by which difficult or doubtful questions can be settled with precision, what parliamentary law we have is largely made up of rules subject to constant change, and of precedents liable to be reversed. "What is the law upon any subject," said an eminent lecturer on jurisprudence, "is hidden in the breasts of our judges, and can only be ascertained by experiment;" and the great uncertainty which attends the administration of the rules which are presumed to govern public bodies might lead one to conclude that what is parliamentary law upon any occasion is hidden in the breast of the speaker, or the president, or the moderator, or the chairman, and has little other force than his decision. While such decisions are at all times subject to the test of an appeal from the presiding officer to the assembly, experience shows that the time wasted in long debates often proves a more costly obstruction to the progress of public business than any supposed advantage in establishing a principle. It has been computed that almost one-third of the time of the annual sessions of congress, and nearly one-third of the pages of the costly and voluminous official record, are consumed upon points of order. In parliamentary bodies where there is no restriction upon debate, as in the senate, time enough has frequently been wasted in discussion whether to take up a certain measure to have fully debated the measure itself pro and con., and to have passed or to have rejected it besides. There are growing signs, in and out of congress, that the progress of public business will be more insisted upon than the right of unlimited utterance, or "the superstition of talk," which is an advertisement of the individual. Parliamentary action is very rarely affected by long speeches, or by sharp or finely-drawn distinctions of what may or may not be done under the rules. The loss of the precious and unreturning hours which should be given wholly to the well-considered legislation of a great people, in frivolous disputes over inadmissible motions and points of order, leaves so little time that the most important public measures are imperfectly discussed, hastily considered, and crudely framed into law, while the soul of the intelligent legislator is vexed continually, and the legislature itself is brought into contempt. Amid the mass of good and bad precedents, and of rules heaped upon rules, it is not strange to find that the business of direct legislation is hindered rather than helped. What the legislator requires, but does not find, is simplicity instead of intricacy, and an assured standard of appeal instead of a jumble of conflicting decisions. Equally important is it to the ready dispatch of business in conventions and public meetings that there should be a recognized code of procedure, as well as a firm, skillful and courteous presiding officer to enforce it.

—The origin of the great body of what is recognized as parliamentary law is directly traceable to the usages of the British parliament (treated in a preceding article). From the days of the anonymous "Order and Vsage of Keeping of the Parlements in England," by John Hooker, published at London in 1572, (the earliest publication on the subject of which we find record), to the latest edition of Sir Thomas Erskine May's elaborate "Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament," the English books are the fountains from which the American and in great part the continental treatises on the subject are drawn. It were greatly to be wished that along with the formal principles and precedents of the science (if so it can be called) we had also drawn from them one of the best features in the practice. Perhaps there is no element in the conduct of our legislative business more palpably a source of weakness than the fact that in the parliaments of America there is no responsibility for measures. In the house of commons, as in the legislative assemblies of nearly all European nations, the ministry are not only present, but are held to a direct responsibility. The party which has been for the time being intrusted with the conduct of the government, brings in its measures, supposed to be in consonance with the public will, and explains and defends them in debate. All appropriations (bills of supply) needed to carry on the government, and embracing the army, the navy and the civil service, are thus brought in and supported by able men familiar with all their details, because concerned in the administration of each department. Not only so, but most measures of the session demanded by public opinion, whether connected with parliamentary reform, education, public morals or the widely diversified interests of the United Kingdom at home or abroad, find in the ministry on the floor of parliament vigilant advocates, courting and not shunning debate, answering objections, and ready to take the responsibility of success, or the result of failure, which will consign them from their places of power to private life. How wide the difference in our American legislatures. There, no executive officer can be so much as questioned respecting the acts, the demands or the service of his department, except in the furtive obscurity of a committee room. The only responsibility for public measures which attaches anywhere resides in one or at most two committees of the house, overwhelmed with multifarious business, and utterly unable, though never so competent, to make themselves masters of the infinite detail of the bills they present, and give attention at the same time to other public business, and to the never-ending wants of their constituents. Candid confession comes from one baffled congress after another that under the existing practice no systematic law-making is possible. Instead of a well-digested, clear and easily administered
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body of laws, the statute book is filled with crudities and contradictions which those who administer them are unable to reconcile. It is some consolation, doubtless, to reflect, in presence of the 8,000 to 12,000 bills that do not become laws with which every congress is flooded, how much greater calamities we have escaped. What is true of congress is true in a modified sense of all the state legislatures: the mass of crude legislation which is irresponsibly gotten through, places before the executive a perilous task of arresting it by vigorous use of the veto power, or the perhaps still more perilous responsibility of approval.

—For the sake of greater clearness and facility of reference, the various subjects embraced under Parliamentary Law will here be treated in alphabetical order. Substantially the same course of proceeding here noted as prevailing in congress is followed in the legislatures of the several states of the Union, with many variations as to details, according to the rules adopted by each body.

—ABSENCE. The presence of members of the body is taken for granted in all representative assemblies, as due to their constituents. This can only be suspended by leave of absence, or employment in the service of the body. Absenteeism embarrasses business, and is unjust to other members, as well as to those represented; yet it sometimes goes so far in protracted sessions as to threaten the loss of a quorum. In congress, the constitution itself empowers less than a quorum to compel attendance of absentees; a rule of the house prohibits absence except from actual necessity or with leave; and no senator can be absent without leave first obtained. The statutes require deduction of salary pro rata for absence of a senator or representative, except for sickness of himself or family. In both houses, when votes by yeas and nays are recorded, the names of members absent (or not voting because paired) are published in the journal. In parliament leave of absence is usually given in case of domestic affliction or urgent business, but it is occasionally refused. In the French chambers absence is not allowed without leave of the body except in urgent cases, when the president may grant it. Requests for leave of absence are reported upon by a committee and announced by the president. The salary of deputies is stopped when absent without leave.

—ADJOURNMENT. A motion to adjourn takes precedence of all others. It may be made at any time (except when a member is speaking, or the house is voting) unless a motion to adjourn has just previously been negatived: it is not debatable, nor can it be amended. The unfinished business cut off by adjournment generally has precedence in the orders of the day; and this is an express rule of the house and senate. No adjournment for more than three days is permitted to either house of congress by the constitution, unless the other house concurs. If the houses disagree as to the time of adjournment, the president may adjourn them to such time as he thinks proper. In parliament the motion to adjourn is debatable, and may be amended as to time of adjournment. In the commons the speaker adjourns the house when a quorum is found wanting, and the fact is noted; but in both houses of congress business may proceed without a quorum by unanimous consent, or until the question of a quorum is raised by a division. After this no motion is in order except for a call of the house, or to adjourn. In the French chambers, before each day's adjournment, the president consults the chamber as to the day and hour of its next meeting, as well as the subjects to be considered.

—AMENDMENT. Any alteration proposed to a motion or to a bill is an amendment. Amendments are often proposed to defeat a proposition, as well as to promote its object. Amendments may be simply to strike out a portion, or to insert new matter, or to strike out, and insert in place of the matter stricken out. They are to be offered in the order of sequence, if the proposition being considered consists of several sections or paragraphs. It is not in order to refer back and amend parts which have been considered, after a latter part has been amended. Every amendment proposed is itself capable of amendment; but there can be no amendment in the third degree, i.e., of an amendment to an amendment. To accomplish such an object the mover should seek to have the amendment to the amendment rejected, then moving his amendment as an alternative, with due notice to the body of the intent to be accomplished. A rule of the house permits a third amendment by way of substitute, to which one amendment may be offered. Amendments once agreed to or rejected can not afterward be altered or amended. Motions to amend may be withdrawn or modified before the previous question is ordered, but not afterward; and amendments withdrawn may be offered again at a further stage of proceeding. Amendments in parliament need not be of the same subject matter with the proposition before the body. A member may move to substitute a wholly different proposition for the one moved, and such an amendment is to be voted upon. But in committee of the whole house this rule does not apply, the house being authorized only to consider the subject referred to it. In congress no amendment is to be admitted on a subject different from that under consideration. In amendments the form of words, and not their substance, is concerned; and as anything may be moved, the opponents of a motion often attempt its defeat by rendering a proposition absurd or obnoxious, or even reversing its substance, so that its supporters join with its opponents to defeat it. No amendment can be in order which contravenes the law or the standing or special orders of either house, or which is the same with any proposition already voted upon during the same sitting. An amendment to strike out is in this country put directly, but in parliament the speaker puts the question whether the words proposed to be stricken out shall stand as part of the question. If an amendment to leave out is passed,
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it is not in order to move to insert the words left out in the same place, but they may be moved in another place. The same rules apply as to amendments by insertion. Motions to amend, being properly considered previous to what it is proposed to amend, take precedence, and the question is first taken on the amendment; the same rule applies to an amendment of an amendment. Amendments moved by a member who has already spoken can not in parliament be introduced by a speech. In congress the opposite rule prevails. In congress no amendment to an appropriation bill is in order which increases expenditure or provides for expenditure not previously authorized by law, or which changes existing law. To the last an exception is made admitting amendments which are germane to the subject matter and at the same time retrench expenditure. In committee of the whole it is usual to limit debate upon proposed amendments to five minutes for each speaker; but the majority may at any moment close all debate upon any paragraph or pending amendment; whereupon further amendments may be offered, to be decided without debate. Any bill sent by one house to the other is subject to amendment in all its parts: when returned, the usual course is to disagree to the amendments as a whole or in part. If each house adheres to its disagreement, the bill or resolution is lost; but the differences are commonly adjusted by a committee of conference, whose report is usually accepted by both houses. No bill can be amended after the agreement of both houses. Amendments do not require a second in congress; in the house of commons every amendment must be proposed and seconded the same as an original motion. In the French chambers amendments are offered through the president, who refers them to the committee having similar measures in charge. They are printed, and their authors have the right to be heard before the committee.

—APPEAL. The presiding officer's decisions upon questions of order are made subject to an appeal to the assembly. It is optional with the chair to decide the point of order himself, or to submit it to the body. In the house of representatives the speaker must decide. If any member appeals from the decision of the chair the question is then put, "Shall the decision of the chair stand as the judgment of the body?" If the decision is not sustained, the chair is overruled by a majority of the members, and such a vote forms a precedent of some importance on similar questions. A motion to lay the appeal on the table, if carried, has the effect to sustain the decision of the chair. This motion can not be made in committee of the whole. Questions of order just decided on appeal can not be renewed. In parliament the speaker of the lords as well as of the commons refers most questions of order directly to the judgment of the house; the process of an appeal appears not to be provided for.

—APPROPRIATIONS. In parliament all bills granting supplies to carry on the government (money bills) must originate in the house of commons; and in 1678 this prerogative was carried so far as to exclude the lords from all power of amending bills of supply. This exclusive power has been jealously maintained by the commons for more than two centuries. In congress a similar claim for the house of representatives to originate all appropriation bills has been made, but not insisted on nor maintained; though the constitutional privilege of the house to originate all bills for raising revenue has always been jealously adhered to. The house committee on appropriations was first formed in 1865, to relieve the committee of ways and means of part of its too onerous duties. The senate committee on appropriations was organized in 1867, its functions having been previously vested in the committee of finance. In congress appropriation bills always have precedence, and may be reported at any time. They must be considered in committee of the whole house on the state of the Union. By one rule of the house and senate they must not embrace expenditures not previously authorized by law, nor provisions changing existing law: but such provisions are frequently incorporated by the committees reporting them. The yeas and nays must be recorded on their passage in the house, but not necessarily in the senate. After being considered and debated in committee of the whole, the bill is reported to the house for passage; but a separate vote is taken upon any clauses or amendments upon which any member claims the right to divide the house. In the French chambers the budget is in charge of a committee of thirty-three members, to whom are referred all matters of public revenue or expenditure.

—BALLOT. Voting by ballot, while it preserves secrecy, is out of favor in legislative bodies, and the constitutions of eleven states require all votes taken in the legislature to be vivâ voce. In other states it is left to the legislature to regulate its own methods of voting. A rule of the house makes a majority of the votes given necessary to an election. When the house votes by ballot the speaker is required to vote. For many years past no vote by ballot has occurred in either house of congress, the speaker and the president pro tem. of the senate having been elected by vivâ voce votes. The other officers of each house are chosen by resolution by the controlling party, the minority usually proposing and voting for their own candidates by way of substitute. In parliament secret committees are usually chosen by ballot. The speaker of the commons is chosen upon motion and second by assent or informal vote, unless the house divides, when the usual count of votes is had. (See BALLOT, vol. i., p. 197; Vote.)

—BAR. The bar of the house implies the railing in the rear of the outer seats of members. Formerly members were required to be within this bar in order to vote; now, a member may vote on a roll-call from any
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place within the hall. In counting the house he must be within the railing. In another sense, the bar of a legislative body is the area in front of the presiding officer; and offenders are brought to the bar to be examined, tried, admonished, reprimanded, imprisoned or discharged, as the case may be. The speaker appears, followed by the commons, at the bar of the house of lords on ceremonious occasions. Members of the commons not yet sworn must sit below the bar.

—BILLS. A bill is any proposed act of legislation, commencing with the formula, "Be it enacted," etc. Every Monday in the house of representatives the speaker must call the states and territories, through their members, for bills offered for printing and reference without debate. In the senate one day's notice for bringing in a bill is required, unless received by unanimous consent. Bills are referred at once to the committee to which by their subject matters they properly belong. Every bill must be read three times before its passage, the first and second readings by title, on introduction; the third reading in full, when put upon its passage, or by sections, when debated and amended. No bill can be amended by incorporating in it the substance of any other pending bill. Bills or resolutions may be reported at any time from six committees only: the committee on elections, on members right to seats; ways and means, on bills to raise revenue; appropriations, on general appropriation bills; printing, on printing for congress; accounts, on house expenditures; and enrolled bills, such bills as are enrolled. Other bills from committees must take their chance of being reported back when the committee is called in its order. Bills reported favorably by committees must go on the proper house calendar in the order so reported, and the senate has the same rule. The enacting clause of all bills must be uniform, thus "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled." Formerly every section of a bill, no matter how numerous, began with the words, "And be it further enacted"; but this tedious and useless verbiage was dispensed with in 1871, shortly before the statutes were codified, and no enacting words are now used in any section except the first. It is the right of every member to have a bill read through at each stage of its progress, though it is customarily, by unanimous consent, read only by title, except upon its passage, when a full reading is mandatory. After a bill has been read three times, the question is, "Shall the bill pass?" after which it is not amendable, although open to debate, unless the house at once seconds the demand for the previous question on its passage. When a bill is passed, the member in charge of it moves that the vote last taken be reconsidered, and that the motion to reconsider be laid on the table. If the house votes aye, no reconsideration can take place, and the bill goes at once to the senate. In the senate the passage of bills involves no such formalities. All bills passed by the house must be certified by the clerk with his signature and the day of their passage, and conveyed by him or an assistant to the senate. While bills are on their passage between the two houses, they are on paper; after being passed by both houses they must be enrolled on parchment, and examined (compared or collated) by the joint committee on enrolled bills. Next, they are signed by the president of the senate and the speaker of the house, and presented to the president for his signature. Bills signed by the president are filed in the department of state, where they form the official acts of congress, from which the annual "Statutes at Large" are printed. The president notifies his approval with its date to the house in which the bill originated, and this appears in the journal. Any bill not returned by the president within ten days becomes a law by force of the constitution, unless congress adjourns meanwhile, in which case it does not become a law. (For bills failing to become laws through the president's objections, see Veto.) Bills passed in one house and rejected in the other must be notified to the former: they can not be renewed the same session without ten days' notice, and leave of two-thirds. A weekly statement of bills on the speaker's table, with dates and proceedings thereon, must be printed by the clerk. Of each bill offered 750 copies are printed, and many more are frequently ordered. Bills which are undisposed of in either house can be resumed and acted on at the next session of the same congress: but all bills die with the congress, unless they have gone through both houses and been approved by the president. Private bills are defined to be those for the benefit of individuals, companies, etc. Friday in each week is by rule of the house set apart for their consideration; and when reported from committees they are considered in committee of the whole. In parliament there is a radical distinction between public and private bills, which does not prevail in congress. By the standing orders all private bills, whether for the interest of individuals, corporations or localities, must be brought in by petition, and taken charge of by a parliamentary agent. (See LEGISLATION, vol. ii., p. 736.) In the house of lords any peer may offer a public bill without notice; in the commons notice must be given and leave of the house obtained. Bills relating to religion, trade or money grants can not be brought in until they have first been considered in committee of the whole house. Bills passed by both houses receive the royal assent by commission under the great seal. Sometimes the queen assents in person to bills in the house of lords. In the French chambers bills are proposed by the ministry or by deputies, and are printed and referred to proper committees. Members proposing them may be heard before committees. Reports upon bills are printed, after which the chamber fixes the time for debate. No bill can become a law without two deliberations upon it with an interval of at least five days,
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except financial bills, bills of local interest, and bills declared urgent.

—BRIBERY. Any attempt to bribe a member is a breach of the privileges of the house. Several cases of lobbyists and others charged with bribery appear in the journals (See LOBBY. vol. ii., p. 781.) Bribery in the election of members of congress is an offense which has been made the subject of repeated investigations by committees of both houses. In parliament many controverted elections have turned upon real or alleged bribery; but such practices have ceased to be subjects of investigation in parliament since the corrupt practices act of 1868, confiding the trial of controverted elections to the court of common pleas. On proof of bribery by the agents of sitting members (even without the knowledge of the latter) their seats have been vacated; while an act of parliament disqualifies for seven years any candidate guilty of bribery, and disfranchises him as a voter for the same period.

—BUSINESS. In the lower house of congress there are four calendars of business: 1, a calendar of the whole house on the state of the Union, on which are placed all revenue and appropriation bills, 2, a house calendar, embracing all public bills not revenue or appropriation bills; 3, a calendar of the committee of the whole house, for all private bills; 4, a calendar of business on the speaker's table. Questions of the priority of business are decided by a majority without debate. The first business, after prayer by the chaplain, is the reading of the journal of the last day's sitting, then a call of states and territories (if on Monday) for bills and resolutions; and then a morning hour for reports from committees, called in order. After the morning hour devoted to reports, the unfinished business of the preceding session is in order; after unfinished business a motion to proceed to business on the speaker's table is in order, though seldom arrived at. After this, it is in order to go into committee of the whole house upon revenue or appropriation bills. Next in order is business on the house calendar. As it is always in order (after the morning hour) to go into committee for considering revenue or appropriation bills, there is small chance for other measures during most of the session, and thence comes an almost perpetual contest over the order of business. It requires a majority of two-thirds to suspend the rules apportioning the order in which business must be considered; and this majority is seldom obtained, because the rule forbids the speaker to entertain any motion to suspend the rules except on the first and third Mondays of each month, and during the last six days of a session. Special orders, however, are sometimes made in advance for given days, which take precedence of all except unfinished business and revenue and appropriation bills. The senate has a morning hour for presentation of messages from the president, the house, and other communications, petitions and memorials, reports of committees, and the introduction of bills and resolutions. During this hour no other business is in order except by unanimous consent. At its close unfinished business of the preceding session is first in order; second, any special order for the day; and third, the calendar in its order. This calendar must contain every bill and resolution reported from committees or on leave, and house bills and resolutions unreferred to committees. In parliament the public business is apportioned by reserving certain days for considering the orders of the day, and other days for original motions. The members are so numerous that the priority of those desiring to give notices on the same day is determined by ballot, the speaker drawing their names from a box; they are called out, when they rise and make their motions without debate. The right is reserved to place government orders (i.e., the measures of the ministry) at the head of the list on every order day except Wednesday. Friday's order of the day must be either bills of supply or ways and means. Wednesdays are set apart for bills promoted by members not connected with the government, except when the public business is pressing. Special orders are frequently made in advance, as in congress. The French chamber of deputies fixes the order of business for its next session before adjourning for the day; the order of the day thus fixed is posted in the hall, and published in the official journal. On the demand of any member the order of the day must have priority.

—BY-LAWS. In non-parliamentary bodies (as in societies or voluntary associations of any kind), the by-laws constitute the standing rules of the society. They usually follow the constitution, and are of great importance to the orderly transaction of business in its meetings. They should provide a rule for the suspension of them at the will of two-thirds or some other quota of the members.

—CALENDAR. (See Business.)

—CALL. Calling the roll is required at the first meeting of each session of congress. This proceeds by states in their alphabetical order, and shows by the record in the journal who are present. The ordinary roll-call is in alphabetical order of members' names, and is required on every vote that is taken by yeas and nays, the clerk calling out the name, and members answering vivá voce. This call, with the delays arising from indistinctness, absences, changes and reading of the names on both sides, occupies some forty minutes in the United States house of representatives. Various schemes for abridging the enormous waste of time by the roll-call (which sometimes occupies half the hours of a sitting) have been devised: e.g., an annunciator with electric wires, the member touching a button at his desk, and the vote being recorded yea or nay instantaneously for the whole house. The house, however, has never countenanced any substitute for vivâ voce voting. The call of committees and of members from states for bills and resolutions is treated of under Business.

—CALL OF THE HOUSE. When no quorum is present, a call of the house is in order, which proceeds thus: the names of the members
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are called by the clerk, and the absentees noted; the doors are then closed, and the majority present orders absentees sent for and arrested wherever found, by officers appointed by the sergeant-at-arms; when absent members are produced, the speaker calls for their excuses at the bar, and the house determines upon what condition they shall be discharged from arrest. Scenes of great disorder and merriment sometimes occur during a call of the house. No motion is in order during the call except to adjourn, or that all further proceedings in the call be dispensed with: the last motion is usually made upon the appearance of a quorum. In the senate a call of senators must be made when the question of a quorum is raised. If no quorum is present, the majority may direct the sergeant-at-arms to request or to compel the attendance of absent senators; pending which, no debate and no motion except to adjourn is in order until a quorum appears.

—CENSURE. Members of a legislative body are liable to censure for transgressing the rules in speaking or otherwise. A vote to censure a member requires the speaker of the house to pronounce that such a member (calling him by name) has incurred the censure of the house. Votes of censure have not been infrequent, mainly for unseemly conduct or transgression of the rules of debate; and instances are not wanting where the speaker has been required to pronounce the censure of the house upon members who have been guilty of grave derelictions in their capacity of representatives. In parliament the speaker of the commons has been sometimes directed to reprimand or admonish persons at the bar who have offended against the dignity of the house. In the French chamber of deputies members are subject to censure of the chamber, who have refused to heed a call to order, or have been guilty of tumultuous conduct, or of menacing or insulting any of their fellow-members. Censure, coupled with exclusion from the hall for fifteen days, is pronounced against any deputy who has been guilty of any violence, or has resisted a simple censure, or has menaced any member of the government or the president of the republic. Both censures carry with them temporary forfeiture of the salary. In case of resistance by any deputy, or of tumult in the chamber, the president at once adjourns the session, and the public prosecutor is informed that an offense has been committed in the palace of the chamber of deputies.

—CHAIRMAN. The chair is usually filled by the speaker in the house and by the vice-president in the senate. The speaker has the right to call any member to preside if he desires to leave the chair, and this member is addressed as "Mr. Chairman"; but such substitution is limited to the day when made; except that in case of his illness he may appoint a chairman, with the approval of the house, for not more than ten days. In the absence of the speaker without making such an appointment, the house elects a speaker pro tempore, who is addressed as "Mr. Speaker." When the house goes into committee of the whole the speaker never presides, but designates a member, who is addressed as "Mr. Chairman." When the committee of the whole rises, which is done by motion, the speaker resumes the chair, and the chairman formally reports to him what progress has been made upon the business in hand. In the senate the chairman, who is elected to take the place of the vice-president as presiding officer, is known as the president pro tempore. Either officer may call any senator to occupy the chair, but only for the day or a less time at his pleasure. This substitute is still addressed as "Mr. President." The chairman of a committee is the first-named member thereon, by a rule of both houses. In his absence the next-named member acts as chairman. The great amount and importance of business prepared for legislative action by the committees renders the chairmanship an influential and much desired position.

—CHILTERN HUNDREDS. (See PARLIAMENT, THE BRITISH.)

—CLERK. At the beginning of each congress the house is called to order by the clerk of the last house, who continues in office until his successor is chosen. He then calls the roll of members, and decides all questions of order until the election of a speaker, subject to appeal to the house by any member. His successor is elected immediately after the choice of a speaker, by vivâ voce vote. The clerk must note all questions of order and decisions thereon; keep the journal of the house and print it, with an index; certify to the passage of all bills and resolutions; attest, by signature and seal of the house, writs, warrants and subpœnas; make all contracts regarding supplies or labor for the house; disburse and account for the contingent fund; appoint and pay the assistants in his office, keep the stationery accounts; and have charge of certain classes of documents for distribution. He has the custody of all bills, petitions and other papers pertaining to business before all committees of the house at the close of each congress, to be preserved in the files of his office. He must make a roll of representatives elect before the first meeting of each congress, placing on it only those whose credentials show them regularly elected. All messages from the house to the senate are conveyed by the clerk or one of his assistants.

—CLȒTURE. This term, recently adopted from the French, denotes the closing of debate, answering closely to the previous question, as it prevails in American assemblies. In parliament the previous question does not have the effect to suppress all further discussion of the main question. The want of any standing order enabling the majority of the house to close debate and secure the prompt passage of the ministerial measures, led to the protracted parliamentary contest of 1881-2, and the adoption of new rules for procedure in the house of commons. As introduced by Mr. Gladstone, Feb. 20, 1882, the procedure resolutions required the closing of debate by a bare majority approving the putting of the question by the
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speaker; but the question under discussion was not to be decided in the affirmative unless supported by 200 members or opposed by less than 40. This radical measure was the fruit of the obstructive tactics adopted by the Irish members in the long session, Jan. 6 to Aug. 7, 1881. Taking advantage of the rules of the house, designed to promote freedom of debate, about forty members successfully thwarted the majority, and for many months prevented legislation giving the government power to enforce the laws in Ireland. Several all-night sessions of the house, and one continuous sitting of forty-one and one-half hours, with scenes of great disorder, were the fruits of these obstructive tactics on the part of the home rule members. A series of motions to adjourn the debate, to adjourn the house, etc., were continually renewed in the endeavor to weary out the majority and delay the obnoxious Irish bill by adjournment of the house; but the majority, backed by the conservative party, who made common cause with the ministerialists, kept the house together by relays, and the debate went on day and night. At length the speaker took the decisive measure of arresting debate by putting the motion for leave to bring in the bill to suppress disorders in Ireland. This was carried, the Irish members leaving the house in a body. The bill reaching a second reading, the obstructions were renewed, and Mr Parnell and other members were "named" by the speaker for disregarding the authority of the chair. Resistance to the progress of business continuing, a motion for the expulsion for the day of thirty-one of the home rule party was carried; and, after four nights' debate, the first "urgency" resolution of Mr. Gladstone was carried, 359 to 56. This secured parliamentary progress, and the Irish bill was passed through both houses within a week, and received the royal assent March 2, 1881. At the next session of parliament (1882) the adoption of the clôture as a permanent standing order was carried after months of struggle and debate. An amendment that in no case should the clôture be enforced unless with the support of two-thirds of those present, was lost. The procedure resolutions were finally passed Dec. 1, 1882, and are to the following effect: 1, provides that the speaker or chairman may stop the debate at his discretion, if supported by more than 200 members; or if opposed by less than 40, and supported by more than 100; 2, provides that motions for adjournment for the discussion of a definite matter of urgent public importance, shall be entertained if forty members support it by rising up; 3, provides for limiting such debate to the subject in hand; 4, provides for the taking of divisions; 5, 6 and 7, are technical rules for the speaker's or chairman's guidance; 8, makes it a standing order that no opposed motion shall be taken after half-past twelve at night; 9, regulates the suspension of offending members; 10, gives the speaker or chairman the power to check attempts to secure delay by abuse of the rules; 11 and 12, are minor provisions; and 13 makes the first seven and last three resolutions into standing orders. In the French chamber of deputies, by Art. 108 of the Règlement, the president is to take the sense of the chamber before pronouncing the closing of debate. If the clôture is opposed, only a single speech against it is allowed. The clôture being once pronounced, no further debate is in order, with the single exception of remarks upon the state of the question.

—COMMITTEES. A committee is an officially constituted organ of a deliberative body to facilitate its business by examining questions, canvassing their merits by discussion, testimony, etc., digesting resolutions, or preparing bills for action, and reporting their conclusions to the body of which they are members. In societies, conventions and celiberative assemblies, it is the almost invariable practice that the presiding officer appoints all committees. The mover of any special committee is usually by courtesy appointed its chairman, although the selection both of committees and of chairmen is always within the power of the assembly. Committees are most important organs of a body to forward its business by intelligent and orderly procedure. In the house of representatives the speaker has the sole power of appointing committees. There are three kinds of committees in congress, viz., standing, select and joint, besides committees of conference, which are appointed for the occasion, to reconcile differences between the houses upon matters of legislation. The standing committees of the house are forty-seven in number, appointed at the commencement of each congress. Three of these are joint committees, the senate having a similar committee to act with them. They consist of from fifteen members each down to three, the greater number having eleven members. Select committees, ordered by the house from time to time to consider special subjects, consist of various numbers and do not hold over the session, unless specially authorized, while the standing committees are for the whole congress. In 1802 the house had only five standing committees of seven members each. The call of committees for reports is daily, except on the first and third Mondays of each month. All reports of committees must be in writing. They can sit during sessions of the house only by special leave. Committee rooms are provided in the capitol for their sessions, which are private unless they choose to admit spectators. Jefferson's Manual holds that the proceedings of a committee are not to be published, as they are of no force until confirmed by the house; but in modern days the enterprise of the press is adequate to spread before the public all that is of interest in the proceedings of every congressional committee. A committee is sometimes given the special power to send for persons and papers; also to hold sessions in any part of the country where investigation is desired. A majority of the committee constitutes a quorum for business. Each committee has a clerk, appointed by the chairman with the committee's approval, and a calendar of
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business. Any chairman of a committee has power by statute to administer oaths to witnesses. It is common to parcel out committee work involving examination among the individual members, or to refer various topics to sub-committees for report. Some committees meet daily, others weekly, others casually upon call of the chairman, according to the amount or importance of the business referred to them. The right of a committee to report at any time carries with it the right to consider the matter when reported; but all measures involving the raising or expending of money must be first considered in committee of the whole. The only exceptions to this rule are the committees on elections, printing, and accounts. A committee report may be made by the chairman or any one of its members; and he has the right both to open and close debate on the report. Minority reports in writing are usually printed and considered with the majority report. Questions of jurisdiction over certain business often arise between various committees, and are decided by the speaker or the house: the principle governing is, that the principal subject of the bill should control its reference. In the senate the standing committees (thirty-four in number) are appointed by ballot unless otherwise ordered. For many years past the ballot has been dispensed with, and the committees are elected each session (not for the whole congress, as in the house) on motion, the members being named in a body by the party in the majority, which has previously agreed to them in caucus. Special committees are frequently appointed by the president of the senate, who also appoints committees of conference. Reports from committees are to be called for during the morning hour next after the communications to the senate, and the offering of petitions and memorials. In parliament there are no standing committees except on accounts, standing orders, selection, and railway and canal bills, and these must be reappointed every session. Select committees are appointed in the lords by ballot or on motion. In the commons select committees (usually of fifteen members) are appointed vivâ voce on motion of any member naming them, although the house sometimes elects committees by ballot. The house orders in each case what number shall be a quorum of the committee, usually five members in the commons and three in the lords. The object of select committees is usually to take evidence, and power is given them to send for persons and papers. The presence of strangers is usually permitted in house committees, rarely in those of the lords. Their exclusion may be ordered at any time, and is enforced while the committee are deliberating. Secret committees are sometimes appointed, whose inquiries are conducted with closed doors, even members of the house being excluded. All evidence is taken in shorthand, and printed. Reports and resolutions reported by committees, by a standing order are laid upon the table. By a new usage, first in operation in 1883, "grand committees" have been created, selected for the purpose of giving measures mature consideration before they are presented to parliament for debate. This object has thus far been well answered, and the working power of the parliament increased. In the French chamber of deputies the most important committee is that on the budget. This consists of thirty-three members, and is charged with all legislation relating to receipts and expenditures. The chamber may refer to any committee any other propositions for legislation. No member can belong to more than two committees. One day in each week is customarily set apart for committee work.

—COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE. A committee of the whole is constituted of all the individual members of the body, and must be formed by an act of the house itself. In the senate there is no formal resolving into committee of the whole of the body, but simply a resolution that the business then pending shall be considered "as in committee of the whole." This is styled by Mr. Jefferson a quasi committee. The house having resolved to go into committee of the whole, the speaker must leave the chair, after appointing a chairman to preside. Business is taken up in the order of the calendar, appropriation and revenue bills having precedence. The committee must rise and the speaker resume the chair if a message to the house comes in, or a bill is objected to, or any other business occasion arises requiring the immediate attention of the house; after which the house goes again into committee. The rules provide that all matters relating to taxes or appropriations of money shall first be considered in a committee of the whole. The five-minute rule prevails in committee of the whole; i.e., any member is allowed five minutes to explain any amendment he may offer; after which one member is allowed to speak five minutes in opposing it, and there must be no further debate thereon. This is practically extended. however, by permitting an amendment to an amendment, so that many five-minute speeches may be made by pro formâ motions to amend by striking out the last word, etc. When debate runs too long, in the view of those having charge of the measure, the motion is often made that the committee rise; when the house is asked to close all debate upon the pending section; if carried, this cuts off all debate, but does not preclude further amendment. The previous question can not be put in committee, nor motions to reconsider, nor can the yeas and nays be taken, nor can motions, amendments or appeals be laid on the table. The members vote by three methods: 1, vivâ voce by the sound, aye or no; 2, by rising, and standing till they are counted on each side; 3, by passing between the tellers. When the matter under consideration in committee is finished, the committee rise, and the chairman reports to the speaker, "The committee of the whole house on the state of the Union having had under consideration (such a subject) have directed me to report the same with (or without)
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amendments." In parliament the chair is taken in committee of the whole by the chairman of the committee of ways and means in the commons, and by the chairman of committees appointed each session in the lords. The ordinary function of committees of the whole house is deliberation. Every public bill and all matters concerning religion, trade, revenue or the grant of public money must first be considered in committee of the whole. Members may speak more than once in committee, but not in the house.

—CONCURRENT RESOLUTION. This is a resolution adopted by both houses, chiefly on the subject of adjournment of the session. Unlike a joint resolution, it does not require the signature of the president.

—CONFERENCE. To adjust differences in the form or substance of a measure which has passed both houses, though in a different shape, committees of conference are appointed by the presiding officer. They consist usually of three members from each house, two of whom are of the majority party, or favorable to the measure. In all cases of disagreement, or when either house refuses to concur with amendments to any measure made by the other, a conference is moved. Reports of committees of conference must be signed by a majority of the committee of both houses, and are always in order. They must contain an explicit statement as to what effect the committee's report will have on the measure. If the conferees fail to agree (as often happens) they report to their respective houses, and a new committee (or the same) is again appointed. Three or four conferences, with as many committees, are sometimes required. The usual form of moving a conference is that the house (or senate) insist on its disagreement and ask for a conference: the alternative motion is, that the house recede from its amendments, or from its disagreement, and agree to the amendments of the other body. The senate has a rule that the question of consideration of conference reports shall be taken at once without debate. In parliament conference committees are more formal, and may be demanded by either house concerning the privileges of parliament, the course of proceeding and the bills or amendments passed by the other house. Each house appoints managers to represent it at the conference, and both houses are thus brought into direct intercourse with each other by deputations of their own members. Business is suspended in both houses of parliament during the sitting of conference committees. In the French corps legislatif, when the senate disagrees with the chamber of deputies, a committee of conference may be moved to agree upon a new form of law. If the conference report is rejected by the deputies, it is not in order to bring in a similar bill until two months have expired, except upon the initiative of the government.

—CONSENT. In the ordinary course of business at public meetings, and in some parliamentary bodies, business may be done by unanimous consent. The presiding officer puts the question: Is it the pleasure of the assembly that such a thing should be done? If no member dissents, he announces, "The chair hears no objection," and the thing is ordered without putting the question in any other form. If a single member objects, the chairman must put the question in the usual way by a motion and second. The introduction of any bill or resolution out of the regular order requires unanimous consent. It is customary for members to ask unanimous consent to withdraw papers from the files, to be excused from the house or from voting, to print remarks not actually delivered, to have a bill or motion taken up for present consideration, to have their time extended when speaking, etc. If no objection is made, the chair announces that the request is granted.

—CONSIDERATION. To raise the question of consideration is to endeavor to defeat a measure by bringing the house to vote whether they will consider it. It is too late to raise the question of consideration on any question after its discussion is actually begun.

—CONSTITUTION. In most societies or permanent voluntary organizations it is customary to adopt a constitution and by-laws for the government of the body. The constitution commonly sets forth the name and object of the organization, the qualifications and mode of electing members and officers, and the regulations for meetings. It also contains provision for its amendment through a vote of two-thirds or some other majority, after specified previous notice at a regular meeting.

—CONTEMPT. (See Privilege.)

—CONTESTED SEAT. (See Elections.)

—CONVENTION, JOINT. A joint convention of the two houses is held only upon occasion of counting the electoral vote for president and vice-president. Formerly this assembly was regulated by a joint rule of the two houses, providing that the president of the senate should be their presiding officer, and prescribing details for counting the vote. This rule, however, was abolished in 1876, and there is now no rule upon the subject.

—DAY, LEGISLATIVE. For the purposes of legislation the congressional day begins at 12 o'clock M., or at such earlier hour as either house shall have adjourned to. It does not terminate until an adjournment is had; a recess merely to the next day does not end the legislative day then running. An adjournment does not necessarily take place at the beginning of Sunday; a majority may continue in session after that hour (as has frequently happened), but the journal bears the date of the day preceding (Saturday).

—DEADLOCK. This is a common phrase, which designates a stoppage of business in one house through obstructions by the minority; or, a deadlock in legislation may occur between the two houses, through party differences, when the majority in one is of different politics from that controlling the other. The latter are usually compromised by each house yielding something; the former sometimes lasts for days and nights, the party seeking to prevent the enactment of an obnoxious measure exhausting every parliamentary expedient by calls of the
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house, motions to adjourn, calling the yeas and nays, etc., on their motions, to defeat or weary out the majority.

—DEBATE. In all assemblies for the transaction of business it is essential that there should be rules to regulate and limit discussion. There are some rules which may be regarded as universal; as, 1, No debate is in order unless a motion of some kind is before the assembly. 2, Any one rising to debate must address the presiding officer, not the assembly; 3, By courtesy, the mover of any proposition is first entitled to the floor; 4, Debate must be confined to the question before the assembly. In the house of representatives a member rising must address "Mr. Speaker"; the speaker names the member who is first to speak (as "the gentleman from Maine," etc.). When several rise at once the member who first catches the speaker's eye is to be called upon. A member reporting a measure from a committee opens and closes the debate; no member can speak more than one hour without express leave of the house, or more than once to the same question unless he be the move of the matter pending, when he may speak in reply after all others choosing to do so have spoken. No debate is allowed after the previous question is ordered, except one speech from the member closing debate: it is common, however, for the member having an hour to close to yield a given amount of his time to several members. In both houses no debate is allowed on motions for adjournment or recess, or to lay any business upon the table, or to consider conference reports, to excuse from voting, or on questions of order arising after a motion for the previous question, or upon reference or priority of business. No member may call another by name in debate, or notice the views of the other house; both of these rules, however, are frequently violated. In the senate debate is without limit, unless a special order is made to curtail the length of speeches. No senator can interrupt another without his consent, or speak more than twice on the same question the same day without leave of the senate. Both houses have a rule that any member transgressing in debate the rules of the house, shall be called to order, when he must sit down, and can not proceed without leave, the exceptionable words being taken down. Senators must stand in their places when debating: but members of the house may speak from their seats, or from any part of the floor, or from the clerk's desk. In the house of lords a peer addresses the lords in general; in the commons the speaker is addressed. The reading of written speeches is not permitted in either house of parliament. A member may read extracts from documents, but must debate questions in the literal sense of that word, without reading manuscript remarks. In both houses of congress written speeches are practically rather the rule, and debate in the true sense the exception. While debating, members of the lords and commons remove their hats, resuming them upon concluding. Debate in the lords depends upon the will of the house; in the commons the speaker recognizes the member who rises first. As several members may frequently rise at once, the one that is first in his eye is called upon. Competition for the floor sometimes leads to a motion that another than the member called by the speaker be first heard. It has been sometimes charged that there was a "speaker's list," by which his recognition of members was governed, but this has never been admitted. The rule of one speech only from any member on the same question is strictly observed. No member can be called by name in either house; in the lords a member is referred to by his rank, as "the noble earl"; in the commons, by the place he represents, as "the honorable gentleman, the member for York." In the French chambers members speak from the tribune, and must first have obtained leave by addressing the president. A list of the deputies who desire to speak at any session is kept, in the order of their demand. In the discussions members speak alternately for and against a measure under consideration; a rule which does not prevail either in England or America. The ministers are to have the floor whenever they claim it, even if it interrupts the order of the regular list, but one of the opposition may always follow the speech of a minister. Disorder or clamor during a discussion is prohibited; if the chamber becomes noisy, and the president can not restore order, he puts on his hat, if the disorder continues he announces the session closed for an hour, at the end of which time the sitting is resumed; if the tumult breaks out again the president must adjourn the chamber to the next day.

—DELEGATES. (See Territories.)

—DIVISION. To call for a division is to test the sense of the assembly on the proposition before it. In the house a division is had by the members on each side of the question rising in their seats and being counted by the speaker, who announces the vote. If dissatisfied with the result, any member may call for tellers, or the yeas and nays may be called for. The division of a question, if demanded by any member, must be made before voting, if it include two or more distinct propositions. In parliament, if the vote by ayes and noes (vivâ voce) is not accepted, there is no division by rising and standing to be counted, but the house at once divides, those voting for the measure withdrawing to the lobby on the right of the house, and those opposed entering the left. Two tellers are appointed by the speaker for each party. As members the back into the house they are counted by the tellers, and their names recorded by the clerks. The result is announced from the chair, and alphabetical lists of the names are printed with the "votes and proceedings." No member can vote who was not in the house when the question was put; but a "division bell" is rung by the doorkeeper when the house is about to divide, which is heard through the neighboring rooms, and scattered members hasten to be present at the division before the doors are locked. The time allowed for this notice is two minutes, measured by a sand-glass; and when that has run out,
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the doors are closed, and the speaker must again put the question by ayes and noes, as by the rule no absentees on the first call could vote unless the question were again put. If the numbers on a division are equal, the speaker must give the casting vote in the commons; if there is a tie in the house of lords, the measure voted upon is lost. In the French chambers a division must be had on the call of any member. The vote is taken, 1. by rising; 2, by open ballot; 3, by secret ballot. The first method is in order upon all questions unless twenty members demand an open ballot or fifty a secret ballot; or when the rising vote, having been twice taken, is not decisive of the question; in this case any member may demand the ballot. The open ballot requires each member to be supplied with white tickets signifying a vote in the affirmative, and blue tickets the negative, on all of which his name is printed. Messengers present to each member an urn, in which he deposits his ballot: all the votes being collected, the urns are opened at the tribune; the secretaries count the ballots of each color, and the president announces the result. The secret ballot is taken by white and black balls, the white signifying the affirmative, and the black the negative. The members deposit the balls themselves in an run; the secretaries turn them out into a basket, count the black and white balls, and the result is proclaimed.

—DOORKEEPER. In some assemblies the sergeant-at-arms or his assistants discharge all the duties of a doorkeeper. In the house of representatives the office of doorkeeper is an important one, involving the care and responsibility of the chamber and apartments of the house and the public property therein, the superintendence of the document room and folding room of the house, and the appointment of many messengers, assistant doorkeepers and pages. During the sessions he announces at the door of the house all messages, furnishes members with printed documents, conveys messages, etc. He must enforce strictly the rules as to the privileges of the hall, and be responsible to the house for the conduct of his employés. In the senate the sergeant-at-arms appoints the doorkeeper and his assistants.

—ELECTIONS. In public assemblies the first business in order is always the election of officers. At any meeting which is not that of an organized body, it is usual for the assembly to be called to order by some volunteer member, who moves that Mr.——act as chairman of the meeting. The motion being seconded, the proposer calls for a vote by ayes and noes. If the voice of the former preponderates, he declares the motion carried, and calls Mr.——to the chair. The chairman, having taken his seat, announces the first business to be the election of a secretary, and calls for nominations, putting the question in the same manner for an expression of the sense of the meeting. Other officers may be elected in like manner, but a president and secretary are all which are usually necessary for a meeting. In the house of representatives the speaker, clerk, sergeant-at-arms, doorkeeper, postmaster and chaplain are elected by vivâ voce vote at the beginning of each congress. The election of members involves questions of the highest privilege, the constitution itself making each house the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members. The committee on elections in the house, and on privileges and elections in the senate, stand at the head of the list of committees. Contested elections of members, of which there are usually several in each congress, are carefully examined by these committees. The law provides that any contestant of an election of any representative must, within thirty days after the result is declared, notify the member whose seat he contests, of his intention and grounds of contest. The member must within thirty days answer the contestant in writing. Ninety days after this are allowed both sides for taking testimony. Witnesses may be examined or depositions taken at any place with due notice on both sides, the member and contestant appearing, either in person or by attorney, before any judge of a United States court, a state court of record, or a notary public, etc., who are by law competent to issue subpœnas and take record evidence in election cases. The testimony is taken in writing, and transmitted to the clerk of the house, by whose order it is usually printed. Contestants have the privilege of the floor pending a decision of their claim, and are usually heard in their own behalf before the vote is taken. Questions of the right of a member to his seat take precedence of all business. Large sums have frequently been voted to sitting members and to those contesting their seats for expenses incurred in the contest. The Revised Statutes (sec. 130) prohibit such payments to any person, but a subsequent statute of 1879 provides that thereafter no contestant or contestee for a seat in the house shall be paid more than $2,000 for such expenses, and that only upon sworn vouchers or receipts for money actually disbursed. The election of senators in each state must be made by the legislature chosen next preceding the expiration of the term of a senator. On the second Tuesday after organizing, each house must vote separately and vivâ voce for a senator. If any one has a majority in both houses he shall next day be declared duly elected senator in joint assembly of both houses. If no one has a majority the joint assembly must vote for senator (each member having one vote), and if no candidate receives a majority on the first day, the assembly must meet at 12 M. each succeeding day of the session, and take at least one vote, until a senator is elected. In parliament the practice in contested elections prevailing in this country was formerly in vogue, but the trial and determination of contests for seats by the whole house of commons grew into a great abuse through the notorious partisanism which almost invariably decided the case. This was reformed by the Grenville act of 1770, which selected by lot all committees for the trial of election petitions. This non-partisan method of selecting
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judges of parliamentary elections was maintained until 1868, when the jurisdiction of the house of commons in the trial of controverted elections was transferred by statute to the courts of law. Complaints of fraud in an election, or wrong returns of members, are tried by a judge within the district concerned, who certifies his determination to the speaker, which is final. If he reports that corrupt practices have prevailed at the election, a commission is sometimes appointed thereon. Corrupt constituencies have been repeatedly disfranchised by act of parliament. In France the chamber elects at each new organization a provisional president, and two vice-presidents, by ballot. The chamber is then divided by lot into eleven bureaus, who proceed to examine the election returns of all the members, by committees of five members chosen by lot. Report is then made to the chamber, which pronounces on the validity of the elections, and the president proclaims the list of regularly chosen deputies. By the French constitution each house is the sole judge of the eligibility and returns of its members. After the powers of a quorum or upward of the chamber have been verified, permanent officers are elected by ticket, viz., a president, four vice-presidents, eight secretaries and three questions (who have charge of the parliamentary expenditure), to serve during the entire session.

—ENGROSSED BILLS. An engrossed bill is a clean copy of the bill, with its amendments, put in proper form for the action of the house. When a bill has passed through all its stages, and the question is about to be taken on the third reading and passage, any member may call for the reading of the engrossed bill, and this may defeat the bill at that stage unless the motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill can be carried. An enrolled bill is a bill which has passed both houses and been enrolled on parchment, the engrossed bill being on paper.

—EXCUSE. All members must vote unless excused, and the motion for excuse must be put before roll-call and decided without debate. The excuses of absent members brought in under a call of the house may be accepted or held inadequate, at the pleasure of the house.

—EXPULSION. A member may be expelled by a vote of two-thirds in either house of congress. This is a constitutional provision, and has been several times exercised. More frequently resolutions to expel members guilty of grave misconduct have been lost, owing to lack of a two-thirds majority, or forestalled by the resignation of the offending member. The latter occurred in the case of Matteson and others whom the house was about to expel for corruption in railway land grants in 1853. (See LOBBY, vol. ii., p. 781.) In the case of B. F. Whittemore, a member from South Carolina, found guilty, on report of a committee of the house in 1870, of selling an appointment to a West Point cadetship, resolutions of expulsion were introduced, but the member resigned his seat an hour or two before the vote upon them was to be taken, and the resolutions were laid on the table. Whittemore returned to his constituents and was re-elected to the house. Thereupon a resolution was passed declining to allow Whittemore to be sworn in as a member, and returning to him his credentials. In the house of commons the power of expelling a member for grave offenses is undoubted. But though this vacates the seat of a member, it does not create disability to serve again in parliament. The famous case of John Wilkes, who was repeatedly expelled from the commons for libel, and was three times re-elected, the house each time standing on its prerogative and declaring the election void, was a disfranchisement which was palpably illegal; and the house itself, in 1782, reversed its action in the Wilkes case, ordering it expunged from the journals as "subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors of this kingdom." Many expulsions from parliament have occurred for corruption, perjury, conspiracy, fraud, libel, forgery, etc., the last instance having been that of James Sadleir for fraud in 1857. In the French chambers the penalties which are affixed to delinquencies do not go the length of expulsion, but only of censure, with temporary suspension from legislative functions.

—EXPUNGING. On various occasion the action of a former legislative body has been rescinded by the passage of a resolution to expunge from the journals a previously adopted order or resolution. The most noted instance of this kind in congress was the passage by the senate, in 1837, of a resolution to expunge from the journal a resolution adopted by the senate in 1834, censuring President Jackson as having assumed power not conferred by the constitution and laws. In parliament entries in the journal have occasionally been ordered to be expunged, the most notable case being that affirming the incapacity of John Wilkes as a member, passed in 1769, and erased in 1782 in the manuscript journal of 1769. The printed journal, however, (though reprinted since), still contains the obnoxious resolution.

—FILES. The clerk of the house and the secretary of the senate have responsible charge of all files of papers, public and private, which accumulate in the course of the business of the respective houses. No memorial or other paper presented to either house can be withdrawn from the files without its leave, except for reference to a committee.

—FILIBUSTERING. This term has long been applied in America to the obstructive tactics and dilatory motions adopted by a minority to defer action upon a measure obnoxious to them. In the house this is done chiefly by the minority insisting upon the constitutional right to take the yeas and nays on every motion; then, by oft-repeated motions to adjourn, to adjourn to a fixed day, to reconsider, to lay on the table, etc., and by relays of members to raise points of order, parliamentary inquiries, etc., hours and sometimes days are consumed in the hope of wearying out the majority, or compelling them to compromise. In the senate, where there are few or no
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checks upon debate, a mild form of filibustering is employed by a well-organized minority taking the floor in succession and each speaking as long as possible. Measures have been thus defeated by consuming the whole time of a closing session.

—FLOOR. To obtain the floor is to be recognized by the presiding officer as having the right to make a motion or a speech. (See Debate.)

—HOUR RULE. In the house of representatives, by a standing rule first adopted in 1847, no member can occupy more than one hour in debate on any question except the member reporting a measure from a committee, who has an additional hour to close the debate, if it extends beyond one day. No similar rule prevails in the senate or in the British parliament.

—IMPEACHMENT. This is a parliamentary power as old as the fourteenth century, and frequently exercised in early history, involving the highest judicial powers. Impeachment by the commons of high crimes beyond the reach of the law, and a trial by the house of lords, were invoked to defend the rights of Englishmen against corruption and oppression in office, whether executive or judicial. In modern times impeachment has been very rare. The direct responsibility of the highest officers to parliament, the limitations of prerogative, the settled administration of the law, and, more than all, the power of public opinion, have restrained those crimes which impeachments were devised to punish. Nevertheless, all persons, whether peers or commoners, may be impeached for high misdemeanors. The last trial of an impeachment in Great Britain, and the only one in the present century, was that of Lord Melvil in 1805. (See, for impeachments in U. S. History, vol. ii., p. 480.)

—IMPRISONMENT. (See Privilege.)

—INSTRUCTIONS. (See INSTRUCTIONS, vol. ii., p. 527.)

—JOINT COMMITTEES. (See Committees.)

—JOINT CONVENTION. (See Convention.)

—JOINT RESOLUTION. A joint resolution, like a public act or statute, is one which is passed by both houses and signed by the president. (See Resolution.)

—JOINT RULE. This is a rule adopted by both houses for the conduct of business between them. A series of fifteen joint rules was adopted as far back as 1790-94, and was in force (with occasional slight additions) until the 44th congress. The most important of these was the 22d joint rule, providing for the counting of the votes for president and vice-president in joint convention of the two houses. Jan. 20, 1876, the senate passed and sent to the house a concurrent resolution declaring that these joint rules previously in force, except the 22d, be adopted as the joint rules of the two houses for that session. The house took no action thereon, but, on Aug. 14, 1876, asked the senate to concur in a resolve suspending for the remainder of the session the 16th and 17th joint rules (forbidding the sending of bills from one house to the other in the last three days of the session, and presenting bills to the president on the last day of the session). The senate, in reply, passed a resolution, notifying the house that, as the house had not notified the senate of the adoption of the joint rules as proposed by the senate, there are no joint rules in force.

—JOURNAL. The constitution provides that each house shall keep and publish a journal of its proceedings. This is done by the clerk, through one of his assistants, known as the journal clerk, and each day's journal must be read on the meeting of the house on the succeeding legislative day. It records with great fullness the motions, votes, petitions, messages—in short, all proceedings in the house, except the debates. In reading the journal the record of petitions, names of members voting, resolutions and messages, are omitted by unanimous consent: even without these the journal often runs to great length. Errors in the journal may be corrected the next day.

—LEGISLATIVE DAY. This begins at 12 M. in congress, unless a different or earlier hour is fixed by either house for its meetings. It terminates with the adjournment, (a mere recess does not end it), but does not always coincide with the day as marked by the calendar. Thus, the legislative day which terminates the session of congress every other year is styled March 3 in the journals and proceedings, although it is actually March 4, from the hour of midnight to noon of this closing day.

—LOBBY and LOBBYING. (See LOBBY, vol. ii., p. 770.)

—LOG-ROLLING. This is a cant phrase, applied to a combination of members to aid each other's measures. The term comes from the business of securing lumber, or logging, where the loggers unite to help each other in the hard work of rolling the immense logs from the forest, where they are cut, to the water. Thus, one member of the legislative body says to others, "Vote for my bill, and I will vote for your bill," and this is called log-rolling.

—MACE. This is the traditional symbol of parliamentary power, as old as the sixteenth century. It is a large block of wood carved and gilt, and is borne before the speaker in the house of commons, when he enters or leaves the house, on the shoulder of the sergeant-at-arms. When he is in the chair, it is laid upon the table. (In the house of representatives the mace is set upright at the table of the sergeant-at-arms, at the speaker's right.) The mace now used in the house of commons is the identical one handed down from the accession of Charles II., 1660. There is no mace in the house of lords or in the senate. It is the time-honored emblem of popular sovereignty, in a legislative sense. The mace now used in the house dates from 1842 (although first introduced in 1789), and represents the Roman fasces, made of ebony sticks with silver bands, and small spears, terminating in a globe of silver, upon which is an eagle with half extended wings: the whole is about three feet in height. When the house is in committee of the whole the mace is removed.

—MAJORITY. The majority which carries any measure is held to be half the whole number of members of any assembly, plus one. Some constitutions require,
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to render an act valid, that it shall have been passed by a majority of those elected; but in both branches of congress a majority of the members present (if a quorum of the whole house) may pass any measure which is in order under the rules. It results that a law may be made by less than one-third of the senators and representatives elected. In fact, twenty senators and eighty-two representatives may, under the rules, pass the most important piece of legislation. The rule that a majority must be had to elect a speaker was suspended in the case of the obstinate struggle of 1855-6, when the house remained unorganized for many weeks, the division of parties being such that no one of three candidates could secure a majority. Finally, the deadlock was ended by the house adopting a resolution that a plurality of votes should elect, and Mr. Banks was chosen speaker. The rule that a majority is required to elect a senator in state legislatures is prescribed by the laws of the United States. In nearly all the states, however, the majority rule which formerly prevailed in the election of representatives in congress, and of state officers, has been supplanted by enactments that a plurality of votes shall elect.

—MEMBERS. Those are recognized as members of a parliamentary body whose credentials are regular, or who by unanimous consent are admitted as members without examination of credentials. Each house of congress is the sole judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members. The house consists of 325 members, since March 4, 1883. Members are to be elected on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every second year (the even years, 1884, 1886, etc.), except in any state where the constitution would have to be changed to alter its election day. In case of a vacancy in a member's seat, the governor of the state issues a writ of election to fill it. The clerk must put on the roll at the first meeting of any congress only those whose credentials show that they were regularly elected representatives. Members of the house must be twenty-five years of age, and senators must have attained the age of thirty. Members of the house can not be contractors, nor be interested in any government contract, nor be office holders, nor presidential electors, nor practitioners in the court of claims. Any subject is eligible to the house of commons who has reached the age of twenty-one, except clergymen, peers, bankrupts, contractors and certain officials. No member of parliament can be counsel before committees, nor a holder of office, except in the ministry. In France the members of the chamber of deputies may take part in the deliberations and votes before the validity of their elections is established. They wear a badge, consisting of the fasces of the republic, with a hand of justice, and a tri-colored sash.

—MEETING. A meeting of an assembly differs from a session. Thus, the house frequently takes a recess to meet at a later hour, and this terminates the meeting, or sitting, but the session is the same, and includes all the adjourned meetings.

—MESSAGE. Messages in congress imply either executive communications from the president (those from department officers are called "letters"), or from one branch of congress to the other. The president's annual message is sent in at the beginning of each session after he has been notified that the houses are organized and ready to receive any communication. Messages are usually sent in duplicate to both houses on the same day, unless in response to a call from one branch only, and are published in the journal and record. A message from one house to the other, borne by a clerk, is publicly announced at the door, and sent to the chair, the business or debate being temporarily suspended to have it announced, when it is laid on the table, and the proceedings are resumed. In parliament, messages from the crown are sent to both houses, under the royal sign-manual, by one of the ministers or an officer of the royal household, either of whom is a peer or a commoner. Such messages are always read at length by the lord chancellor or the speaker.

—MILEAGE. This allowance for traveling expenses to and from the seat of government prevails in congress, and in all the states except four or five. In congress it is twenty cents a mile each way for the session, or rather for the year. In the states, mileage varies from eight cents to twenty cents per mile.

—MONEY BILLS. (See Revenue Bills).

—MORNING HOUR. In each house of congress an hour is set apart for reports, motions and miscellaneous business. It begins, not at the opening of the session, but after the reading of the journal, and always takes precedence of unfinished business.

—MOTION. This term is applied to every proposition submitted by a member of a parliamentary body. In ordinary assemblies, motions made by any one require to be seconded by some other member, before being voted upon: but no second is required in either house of congress. Motions are here treated severally under their respective heads. Every motion must be reduced to writing on the demand of any member. If verbal, the presiding officer states it to the assembly; if in writing, it is read by the clerk. In the house, when a question is pending or under debate, no motion is in order but to adjourn, to fix a day to which the house shall adjourn, to take a recess, to lay on the table, to postpone to a day certain, to postpone indefinitely, to refer, to amend, or for the previous question. In the senate the same rule prevails, except that there is no previous question, and motions are in order to commit, or to proceed to the consideration of executive business. In both houses of parliament one day's notice of a proposed motion is required; but the notice may refer to a future day more remote than the day following. Motions must be seconded in the house of commons; but a seconder is not required in the lords. They must be carefully prepared in writing, and placed in the hands of the chair.

—OATH. Members of legislative bodies take an oath of qualification or
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of office. In congress all must take an oath (or affirmation, if objecting to being sworn) to support the constitution of the United States. The "ironclad oath," affirming that no aid has ever been given to rebellion against the United States, is taken by all who are not dispensed from it by sec. 1757 of the Revised Statutes. In parliament a single oath of allegiance to the crown has been substituted for oaths to maintain the Established church, etc., once required.

—OBJECTION. As no business can be considered in the house out of the regular order without unanimous consent, the right to object becomes very important, as one member can thus defeat or postpone a measure, unless two-thirds of the house can be had to suspend the rules. When in committee of the whole, if any bill or proposition is objected to, the committee must rise and report the objection to the house, which must decide without debate whether it is to be considered or laid aside.

—OFFICERS. The officers usually chosen in a public assembly are a president or chairman, clerk or secretary, and sometimes vice-presidents, and a sergeant-at-arms or doorkeeper. (See under each head.)

—OMNIBUS BILL. This term is applied in congress to a bill embracing numerous distinct objects, as in the bill "making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the government."

—ONE-HOUR RULE. (See Hour Rule.)

—ORDER. This may be said to be the first law of a public assembly, whether legislative or otherwise. The order of business is treated under Business. The order of the day is the regular routine prescribed in the rules, in which certain classes of business are to be considered. To call for the regular order, is to demand that the body desist from what may be proposed out of due order, and proceed to the next business prescribed by the rules. A special order is a subject set in advance for a particular time, and thus to be preferred to the established order of business. In both houses of congress this motion requires a two-thirds vote for its adoption, being virtually a suspension of the rules. A special order may be postponed by a majority vote. The unfinished business of the preceding session takes precedence of a special order. To preserve order is the implicit duty of the presiding officer, and he or any member may call to order members transgressing the rules. In case of a call to order, a member must immediately sit down unless permitted to explain: and the house must at once decide the case without debate. If in his favor, he is allowed to proceed, but not otherwise. If called to order for words spoken in debate, they must be taken down in writing, and read to the house. (See Censure.) When a point of order of any kind is made, it is the duty of the chair to decide it. This he may do by sustaining the point of order, or by overruling it; and business proceeds in accordance with his decision, unless appealed from. (See Appeal.)

—ORDERS, STANDING. (See Rules.)

—PAIRS. The pairing of members in a legislative body is an agreement between two, who would vote on opposite sides of any question, to withhold their votes; such pairs leaving the result unaffected either way. One or both of the members paired may be absent. The rule in both houses of congress requires pairs to be announced after the roll-call, and the names paired published in the record. In parliament pairing prevails to a greater extent than in congress: members of opposite parties pairing with each other not only upon particular questions, but in cases of absenteeism for weeks and even months at a time. The system has never been recognized by parliamentary rules, though so long prevalent; in congress the first rule adopted which countenances pairing was in the 46th congress (1880).

—PAPERS. The reading of papers, if objected to, is determined by the house without debate. A member, however, has the right to read any paper as a part of his remarks. Papers of every description once offered can not be withdrawn from the files without special leave of the body.

—PERSONAL EXPLANATION. This is a member's request to be heard on some matter touching his personal record as a member, and requires unanimous consent. (See Privilege.)

—PETITION. Much time was once consumed by members in formally presenting petitions in open house. The rule now is, for members to deliver petitions to the clerk, indorsing their names and the specific reference (to a committee) desired. These minutes are entered upon the journal and published in the official record. In the senate they are still offered in open session during the morning hour. At the close of a congress, petitions and memorials go from committees to the permanent files, in charge of the clerk. In parliament, petitions must be written, and must have original signatures. They are presented in great numbers, and a standing order refers them without debate to the committee on public petitions. In the French chambers a brief of petitions is printed for the use of members, and they are referred to the committee on petitions, which classifies them, referring some to the minister of any department to whose business they belong, and others to the examination of the chamber. Each petitioner is advised of the disposition made. Any deputy may call for a report in public session upon any petition, and urgency may be demanded (if seconded by the chamber) for the consideration of any one. Every six months ministers distribute a printed report to the members, showing what action they have taken upon the petitions referred to them.

—POINT OF ORDER. (See Order.)

—PREAMBLE. The preamble of a bill or resolution is postponed until the other parts have been considered. When a separate vote on the preamble is not asked for, it is considered as adopted.

—PRESIDENT PRO TEM. In organizing a public assembly a temporary chairman is frequently chosen until a committee has reported officers for permanent organization. In the senate the president pro tempore is chosen to take the place of the vice-president as presiding officer; but this office is frequently left vacant for
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a time.

—PREVIOUS QUESTION. In congress this is a technical name for a motion that debate cease, and that the vote be taken immediately on the question under consideration. The motion for the previous question is not debatable, and can not be amended. The previous question was recognized in the first rules of the house in 1789, and could be demanded by five members. The present rules require a majority of the members present (if a quorum) to order the previous question. When a member calls for the previous question, the chair must immediately put the question, "Shall the main question be now put?" If adopted, the chair puts to vote the questions be fore the house in their order of precedence, till the main question, with all subsidiary ones, is disposed of. The previous question puts it in the power of a majority to close debate at any time. It does not prevail in the senate, where the public business is more at the mercy of individual senators. In parliament the previous question is wholly different in effect. It is an ingenious method of avoiding a vote upon any question proposed. Those who call for the previous question vote against the motion, not for it, as in the house of representatives. If the nays prevail, the speaker is prevented from putting the main question, as the majority have thus refused to allow it to be put. If the previous question is resolved in the affirmative, no further debate or amendment is allowed, and the main question must be voted on at once. In the French chambers the clóture of the debate is always in the control of a majority of the chamber. (See Clóture.)

—PRINTING. In congress all bills and joint resolutions must be printed after being offered; also reports of committees. A list of all reports required to be made to congress must be printed at the beginning of each session. The public printing of congress and the departments is regulated by the statutes in great detail.

—PRIVATE BILLS. The distinction between public and private bills is not closely defined, some bills including interests both public and private, and requiring the decision of the chair as to which class they belong. In congress, as in parliament, private bills are such as are for the interest of individuals, corporations or local bodies—as counties or cities. Bills relating to a state are held to be public bills. No private claim is in order upon any appropriation bill. Regular days are set apart to consider private bills reported favorably by committees. In parliament there is a carefully guarded system of maturing private bills, which saves a vast amount of legislative time and prevents abuses. (See LEGISLATION, vol. ii., p. 756.)

—PRIVILEGE. The privilege of a member of a legislative body rests upon the prerogative of his constituency to be always represented. The constitution itself provides that members shall not be questioned elsewhere for any speech or debate in either house, and shall be privileged from arrest during sessions, and in going and returning. Questions of privilege, by the rules of the house, have precedence of all others, except of adjournment; but the highest privilege attaches to questions affecting the rights of the house itself, maintaining its dignity, and the integrity of its proceedings. In maintaining what are known as their privileges, both house and senate have resorted to one or more of the following measures: 1, ordering the arrest of offenders; 2, directing the speaker to reprimand the party offending; 3, committing the party to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms within the capitol: 4, ordering a refractory witness or a person assaulting a member to be punished by imprisonment in the jail of the District of Columbia for three months: 5. (in the case of reporters) directing exclusion from the hall. The most frequent cases where either house seeks to protect its privilege by penalties are the refusals of witnesses to testify before its committees, and many recusant witnesses have been held in custody until the congress has expired (and with it the power to punish for contempt of its authority), or until a majority have voted to discharge the prisoner, or until he has consented to answer. When any proposition presents, in the opinion of the speaker, a question of privilege, he must entertain it in preference to other business, but it is well settled that the common plea of a question of privilege based upon a newspaper publication can not be maintained unless the member is assailed in his representative capacity. The fact that imprisonment or other punishment by vote of a legislative body contravenes the maxims of constitutional law, and asserts quasi-judicial powers, has rendered it obnoxious to public censure. The argument that the constitution confers no such power is met by the claim that it is inherent in the highest legislative body, essential to its power, dignity and proper functions, and has been repeatedly exercised, not only by both houses of congress, but by local legislatures. The supreme court of the United States, in some earlier cases, has upheld this power in congress, on the ground of right and necessity: but in the recent case of Kilbourne vs. Thompson the court held that the imprisonment of the former for refusal to divulge the private accounts of a company in a matter under investigation by the house of representatives, was illegal and unconstitutional. The plaintiff had been imprisoned forty-five days in the District jail as a recusant witness, by order of the house; and the speaker, and the sergeant-at-arms, with the members of the committee who ordered the matter to be brought before the house, were joined as defendants. In the case of the members, the court held that their constitutional privilege was a good defense to the action, as they took no part in the actual arrest and imprisonment. But it was held that the order of the house, declaring the witness guilty of contempt of its authority and ordering his imprisonment by the sergeant-at-arms, was void, and afforded the officer no protection in the suit brought by the witness. There was no power of the house to punish for contempt found in the constitution: and no authority
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to compel a witness to testify, where the subject-matter of the investigation was judicial, and not legislative, and was proceeding before the proper court. (103 U. S. Reports. 168.) In parliament, while many arbitrary measures have been aimed at persons held guilty of violating the privileges of that body, the right to commit for contempt has long been regarded with increasing jealousy, and has been questioned for more than two centuries, though maintained by the court of king's bench.

—QUALIFICATION. A member of congress is qualified to act in his representative capacity when his credentials have admitted him to the floor, and he has taken the oath of office. No man is disqualified from being a representative who is twenty five years of age, provided that he has been seven years a citizen of the United States, and was an inhabitant of the state in which he has been chosen. The qualifications of a senator are: 1. to have reached the age of thirty: 2, to have been nine years a citizen of the United States; 3, to have been when elected a resident of the state choosing him to represent it. A member of the house of commons need be but twenty-one years of age. (See Members)

—QUESTION Putting the question is one of the most frequent duties of a presiding officer. It is to be put in this form: "As many as are in favor, say Aye": and after the affirmative vote is heard: "As many as are opposed, say No." The chair must clearly state the question on request of any member, before calling for the vote. Members when anxious for the progress of business, or impatient of debate, frequently cry, "Question! Question'" and this, though technically a violation of the rules of order, is seldom interfered with by a judicious presiding officer. In parliament there is a special practice of propounding questions to members of the ministry, concerning public measures or events. A question may be asked as to the intentions of the government, but not as to their opinions upon general matters of policy.

—QUORUM. Unless fixed by constitutional provision or by the law of the body, the quorum of an assembly is a majority of its duly qualified members. In congress less than a quorum may adjourn from day to day, and may compel the attendance of absentees. In the house it requires the presence of at least fifteen members, to authorize a call of the house. The presence of a quorum is frequently assumed, and business proceeds in both house and senate when less than half the number of members are present; but this may be terminated by any member dividing the house, thus disclosing the want of a quorum: whereupon business must stop, and a call of the house (or senate) must be ordered. In parliament forty constitute a quorum in the commons, and three only in the lords. In the French chambers an absolute majority of the whole number of members is required to render any action valid.

—READING. The reading of papers called for may be stopped by the objection of any member, unless ordered by a vote of the house; but a member has the right to read a paper as part of his remarks within the limits of his privilege as to time.

—RECESS. This is a qualified form of adjournment; to take a recess to a definite hour usually serves the purpose of giving necessary rest and refreshment to the members of the body, without long interruption to their public duties. The motion for this is always in order, and not debatable. The term recess is also applied to the long interval between two annual sessions of congress: and powers are often granted to committees to sit during this recess.

—RECOMMITMENT. When committees report bills or resolutions digested by them, for action of the body, it is usual (unless the committee has privilege of immediate consideration) to recommit them to the committee. A rule of the house provides that no bill thus recommitted shall be brought back into the house on a motion to reconsider.

—RECONSIDERATION. In the house a motion to reconsider a vote once taken is to be made on the same day or the day after. It can be made only by a member who voted with the majority, if yeas and nays were taken; otherwise any member may move it. It takes precedence of all questions except adjournments and conference reports. The motion to reconsider is one of great importance, since if it prevails, the former action of the body is liable to be reversed. It is to prevent the possibility of this that the usage prevails for the member having charge of any measure, the moment it is passed, to move to reconsider the vote last taken, and also to move that the motion to reconsider be laid on the table; if the latter motion prevails it is deemed a finality, so far as the passage of the measure is concerned. A motion to reconsider can be applied to every question except to adjourn and to suspend the rules. It is debatable only when the question to be reconsidered was debatable, and then it opens up for discussion the entire subject. A reconsideration requires only a majority vote. In parliament a vote once taken can not be reconsidered.

—REFERENCE. This term is applied to the referring of bills, petitions, etc., to appropriate committees to be considered and reported upon.

—REGULAR ORDER. (See Order.)

—REPORT. Committees, having finished the consideration of any matter referred to them, must make a report to the body thereon, and this is usually required to be in writing. In congress most reports must be printed, though private bills or measures of pressing moment are sometimes acted upon with merely a written report or recommendation. In the senate, the committees must be called daily for reports, during the morning hour; in the house they are called daily, except on the first and third Mondays of each month. When made, they are usually printed and re-committed, or laid over. Reports from six important committees are in order at any time; others must wait their day, or a two-thirds majority, for consideration. Reports of executive departments are addressed to the speaker, or to the president of the senate, and are invariably referred and printed. Such reports on
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resolutions of inquiry must be made within one week. The reports of house and senate committees at each session make several bulky volumes, while the executive reports, both regular and special, make a great many more. In parliament the reports of special committees of the lords or commons are usually published with the evidence taken before them, and carefully indexed. In France committee reports are to be printed twenty-four hours at least before the bill to which they relate is considered.

—REPORTERS. The importance of full public information has led to special provision for reporters of the press in all public assemblies. Each house of congress has a corps of five official stenographers to take down the votes, proceedings and debates verbatim for publication the next day in the congressional record. Besides this, two reporters of the associated press are admitted on the floor of the house. The reporters' gallery over the chair in both houses is for the general press representatives, under regulations made by the chair. In parliament, according to ancient usage, all strangers, including reporters, might be excluded on the motion of any member, and reporters have been actually excluded as recently as in 1870 and 1878, to avoid publicity being given to debates. In the French chambers reporters are freely admitted to the galleries.

—REPRESENTATIVES. (See Members.)

—RESIGNATION. In congress the resignation of any member is always considered his right; it was never contested until the 41st congress, when the speaker decided that the member had the right to resign, and an appeal from the decision was laid upon the table, thereby affirming it. The resignation of a senator or representative is addressed to the governor of the state; at the same time, it is customary for the member to notify the presiding officer, in writing, of the action he has taken. In parliament it is a professedly settled principle that a member can not relinquish his seat; to evade this restriction, a member wishing to retire accepts office under the crown; this legally vacates his seat, and obliges the house to order a new election. (See PARLIAMENT. THE BRITISH.) In France any member has the right of resignation at any time.

—RESOLUTION. A resolution of an assembly is an expression of its opinion with respect to any matter, or a declaration of the purpose of the assembly: thus, the thanks of congress are presented by joint resolution of the two houses. A resolution of inquiry is passed by either house, requesting information from the executive. A simple resolution of one body, whether declaring opinion or otherwise, does not of course bind congress, and is not published in the statutes, but only in the journal and the record. Joint resolutions, on the contrary, have all the force of laws, and frequently contain appropriations of public money. Concurrent resolutions (chiefly providing for the printing of documents, etc.) appear in the statutes, but are not signed by the president. In the senate all resolutions, if objected to, must lie over one day. In parliament a simple resolution of either house has not the force of law. Every resolution reported by a committee may be amended, disagreed to, postponed or recommitted.

—REVENUE BILLS. All bills for raising revenue must, by the constitution, originate in the house of representatives, but the senate may amend them. In the house, bills relating to the tariff or internal revenue belong to the committee of ways and means; in the senate, to the committee on finance; and such bills may be reported at any time, the motion to consider them being always in order after morning hour. Notwithstanding the jealousy of the house of its prerogative in matters of revenue, the senate has exercised great powers in changing revenue bills; the latest and most extreme instance of this was in the tariff revision act of 1883, where the senate amended a small internal revenue reduction bill passed by the house, by adding to it a radical revision of the entire tariff system, and this, with some changes, was accepted by the house. In parliament, bills for raising revenue are called money bills, and are amendable by the lords if they do not alter the intention of the commons by increase or reduction, duration, or methods of raising the revenue.

—RIDERS. A rider to a bill implies tacking on to it, by motion, or the action of a committee, matters of legislation foreign to the subject of the bill itself. In parliament these riders are called "tacks." It has been a too common practice in congress to attach to regular appropriation bills, which must be passed under penalty of embarrassing the government, riders containing new legislation having nothing to do with the appropriations. This practice is resorted to, 1, to carry through a measure otherwise hopeless of being reached under the rules; 2, to effect the amendment or repeal of existing laws: 3, to force upon the other house, when opposed in political opinion, a measure obnoxious to it, and certain to be defeated by it as a separate bill. So far had this thrusting into appropriation bills of legislation foreign to their objects been carried, that the house adopted a rule that no provision in or amendment to any general appropriation bill shall be in order which changes existing law, except such as is germane and retrenches expenditures. Another rule prohibits the amendment of any bill or resolution by incorporating the substance of any other bill or resolution pending. Rule twenty-nine of the senate forbids amendments to be received which propose general legislation, which provide for a private claim, or which are not germane or relevant to the subject matter of the bill.

—RISE. In committee of the whole the motion that the committee rise is equivalent to the adjournment of its functions for the time being.

—ROLL. The roll of a public body is the list (in alphabetical order) of the officially qualified members. The roll-call is a clerical calling out of all the members' names, that they may answer either as present or as voting yea or nay. (See Call, Yeas and Nays.)

—RULES. These are of the first importance as agencies for preserving
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order in the conduct of public business. In most assemblies for a temporary purpose it is usual either to adopt the rules of the house of representatives, or to permit the chairman to decide questions of order and precedence according to his understanding of parliamentary law. In permanently organized bodies the constitution and by-laws adopted form the leading rules which control action, though at all meetings appeal to a more comprehensive code of parliamentary law is often necessary. In the house of representatives the latest thorough revision of the rules was in 1880. This revision embraces forty-five separate rules divided into sections, the last of which provides that these shall be the rules of each congress unless otherwise ordered. Thomas Jefferson has the honor of having formulated, while vice-president, the first rules of parliamentary law ever put into systematic form in this country. The rules laid down in his "Manual of Parliamentary Practice" (first published in 1801) are still declared to govern the house where they are applicable, and not inconsistent with the standing rules adopted. Each house having constitutional power to determine the rules of its proceedings, those of the senate and house differ widely. A standing committee on rules exists in each body, of which in the house, the speaker forms one. Several notable struggles over the application or the radical change of the rules have occurred, one of which, in the 47th congress, drew a decision from the speaker that, as the right of the house to determine its rules was a constitutional one, the majority had at all times the power to make or to alter rules independently of the existing ones, and that no dilatory motions to obstruct their adoption or amendment could be entertained. The suspension of the rules is moved so as to make some business in order which would not be regularly so under the rules. This requires a vote of two-thirds of those present, and must be seconded by a majority, counted by tellers if demanded. This motion is debatable for thirty minutes only. It can be made only on the first and third Mondays of each month, or during the last six days of a session. The rules of the senate, as last revised, in 1877, are seventy-eight in number. No motion to modify or suspend a rule is in order except on one day's notice in writing; but any rule except the 18th (regulating the vote by yeas and nays) may be suspended by unanimous consent of the senate. In parliament the rules are called standing orders, which continue from one parliament to another until modified. The "sessional orders" are resolutions renewed from year to year, and are few in number. In the French chamber of deputies the rules are embodied in a code of 154 articles, which the president is required to maintain. Any appeal to the rules or question of order takes precedence of whatever business is in hand, and suspends debate.

—SCRUTIN DE LISTE. This signifies a vote by ticket, and is required in the French chambers in the election of vice-presidents, secretaries and questors.

—SEATS. Technically, the seat of a member is his function of representative; literally, it is the chair, desk or bench occupied by a member. The seats of senators and representatives in congress are arm-chairs, each provided with a writing desk. In the house they are drawn by lot, at the organization, every two years; in the senate they are "spoken for" or selected in advance when vacancies occur, by individual senators. In both, members of the same party sit together in general, the democrats occupying the seats to the right of the chair, and the republicans those to the left. In parliament and in the French chambers benches are used as seats, and no desks are tolerated.

—SECRET SESSION. In the senate, sessions for the consideration of executive business (nominations to office and treaties) are held with closed doors. These executive sessions may be moved at any stage of the open or legislative session, but are more commonly held just before final adjournment for the day. The chamber is then cleared of all persons except the secretary, four clerks, and the sergeant-at-arms and such of his assistants as the president deems necessary, all of whom must be sworn to secrecy. Any senator disclosing confidential proceedings of the senate is liable to expulsion, and any officer to dismissal and punishment for contempt. But though this is the rule, the practice is widely different; and the votes and speeches in secret session become known so speedily and so generally as to lead to the conclusion that an injunction of secrecy is a dead letter. To adopt a treaty laid before the senate by the executive the concurrence of two-thirds of the senators present is necessary. Nominations made by the president in executive session are referred to committees for consideration and report. No nomination to office can be confirmed on the day it is received or reported, except by unanimous consent. No extract from the executive journal (of secret proceedings of the senate) can be furnished, except by special order of the senate. All the sessions of the senate were secret until the 6th congress (1799), when that body voted to give them the publicity ever since maintained. Rule thirty of the house provides for secret sessions to receive confidential communications from the president, or at the instance of the speaker or any member who has communications which he believes ought to be kept secret for the present; but there has been no such instance for many years. In parliament, though the presence of the public is legally ignored, there are always a limited number of spectators in each house, except when (in rare instances) a member moves that strangers be excluded because of some debate which it is deemed expedient to keep secret.

—SECRETARY. Next to the presiding officer the most important organ of a public assembly is the secretary or clerk, these two terms being interchangeable, to denote the recording officer. He is to keep the record of proceedings (minutes or journal), and it is usual to have this record read and approved at
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the meeting next following that which it covers. This record should embrace every motion or resolution, whether adopted, amended, rejected, or otherwise disposed of. The secretary has the custody of all papers, and should keep an order of business, list of all committees, reports, votes, etc. The secretary of the senate performs the same duties as the clerk of the house of representatives (see Clerk), and, in addition, pays the salaries of members of the senate, which is done in the house by the sergeant-at-arms.

—SENATORS. (See Elections.)

—SERGEANT-AT-ARMS. This officer represents the authority of the body to enforce its rules, and protect its dignity. In the house and senate he is an elective officer, and in the former body is charged with paying the salaries of members. He is required in both houses to attend the sittings of the body, to maintain order and decorum, to serve process and make arrests when ordered, to take absentees into custody upon a call of the house, and to make regulations to protect the capital and public property therein, including (in conjunction with the architect of the capitol) the appointment and control of the capitol police. In parliament the sergeant-at-arms of each house is appointed by the crown and for life. Besides similar duties to those defined above, he is a leading figure on state occasions.

—SESSION. This term denotes, 1, the time occupied by a sitting of the body after organizing for the day till adjournment; 2, the time spent in public business (usually several months), from the first convening of the members until their adjournment to the next session. Two annual sessions are usual in congress, although one or more extra sessions have been not infrequent, which are called "special sessions," to distinguish them from the annual. The annual sessions begin on the first Monday in December, and terminate on the fourth of March at noon every alternate year, i.e., the odd years, when the term of a congress expires. In the even years, when this limitation does not exist, the session continues from five to nine months. (See CONGRESS, SESSIONS OF, vol. i., p. 594.) Sessions of parliament usually last from February to August, besides which, special sessions occur when public emergency demands.

—SPEAKER. This is the name of the presiding officer in each house of parliament, and in the house of representatives of the American congress. Being, as his title imports, the mouthpiece or organ of the body, the speaker is to express the will of the house. In congress he is elected vivâ voce, on the convening of each new congress, and the completion of the roll-call of members elect. Upon being chosen, he is usually installed in the chair by the members who were his rival candidates for the office; the oath is administered to him by the oldest member in continuous service, after which he swears in all the other members, before entering on any other business. He receives $8,000 salary; he succeeds to the presidency, in case of the office being vacant through failure to fill it by the president, vice-president or president of the senate. It is his duty to preserve order, state all questions, decide points of order, name members to speak, appoint all standing and select committees, sign all acts, joint resolutions and processes of the house, appoint its official reporters and stenographers of committees and have control of the hall, etc. The speaker has the right to vote as a member, but is not required to vote except in case of a tie, or when the house votes by ballot. If absent without having appointed a member to perform the duties of the chair (which power is limited to ten days), the house must elect a speaker pro tempore.

—SPECIAL ORDERS. (See Orders.)

—STANDING ORDERS. (See Rules.)

—STRIKING OUT. In the house a motion to strike out part of a bill, if lost, does not preclude a motion to strike out and insert. The motion to strike out and insert can not be divided. A motion to strike out the enacting clause of a bill has the effect to reject the bill, such motion takes precedence of a motion to amend.

—SUBSTITUTE. A substitute for an amendment in the second degree is in order, but can not be voted on until the original matter is perfected. Any committee may report a substitute for any bill referred to them, when the substitute alone is considered, and is treated as an original bill.

—SUNDAY. Both houses of congress sometimes sit on Sunday, when public business is pressing. In such cases it is usual to continue the journal as of the preceding day's date. In parliament four Sunday meetings of the body are recorded as occasioned by the demise of the crown, and on several other occasions debates have been continued into Sunday morning.

—SUPPLY. This is the technical term applied in parliament to all appropriations for the public service. The right of the commons to originate bills of supply is paramount, and the lords may not amend such bills except verbally. Sometimes the commons have tacked to bills of supply measures which by themselves would have been rejected by the lords; but this has been resisted by protest, by conference, and by rejection of the bills, and there is no recent instance of attempts to force the lords by putting "riders" on bills which the lords have no right to amend. (See BUDGET, vol. i., p. 318; also Appropriations and Revenue Bills.)

—SUSPENSION OF RULES. (See Rules.)

—TABLE. In a public assembly the motion to lay any matter on the table takes precedence of all questions except those of privilege and adjournment. It is not debatable, and can not be amended. It does not imply the defeat of a measure, but simply removes it from consideration until it is voted to take it from the table. But in the house of representatives the usual purpose of the motion to lay on the table is to give a measure its death-blow, and when it prevails it is rarely taken up again during the session. If carried, the effect of the motion to table is to defer the principal question under consideration and all matters connected with it. In congress all business coming from the other house, or communications
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from government officers, are laid on the table unless referred to a committee or otherwise disposed of. A motion to lay upon the table is in order on the second and third reading of a bill. When a motion to reconsider is laid on the table the latter vote can not be reconsidered, and if carried, is held in both houses to be a final disposition of the motion. The business on the speaker's table implies, 1, executive communications; 2, messages from the senate, with bills passed or amended by them; 3, engrossed bills. Near the close of a session a great accumulation of bills, etc., in every stage of progress toward enactment, lies on the speaker's table, most of which usually remains undisposed of. In the senate all resolutions, reports of committees, and discharges of committees from the consideration of subjects, must lie on the table one day for consideration, unless otherwise determined by unanimous consent.

—TELLERS. By a rule of the house of representatives a vote must be taken by tellers if demanded by one-fifth of a quorum; or the speaker may appoint tellers if in doubt as to the vivâ voce or the rising vote. He must name a member from each side of the question to act as teller; these two meet in the middle aisle and shake hands; the chair requests all members voting in the affirmative to pass between the tellers, who count them, and report to the clerk's desk; those voting in the negative are next called to pass between the tellers; this count being reported, the chair declares the result. It is customary, when on a division less than half the house vote, for the speaker at once to order tellers. In parliament two tellers from each party are appointed to count the members when dividing the house. In the United States senate no vote is ever taken by tellers. (See Division, also Vote.)

—TERRITORIES. The delegates from territories have seats and salaries in the house like other members, with the right to speak and participate in business by offering motions, etc., and (latterly) to be appointed on eight of the standing committees. They have no right to vote. The territories are called every Monday, after the states, for bills, memorials, etc., for reference.

—TIE VOTE. When the votes are equal in number on each side of any question, the general parliamentary rule is that the question is lost, but in the senate the vice-president has the casting or decisive vote in case of a tie; though in his absence the president pro tem., having already voted as a senator, can not decide the result as presiding officer, and if the votes are equal the question is lost. In the house the speaker is required to vote only when his vote would be decisive if counted; and in all cases of a tie vote the question is lost. In the house of lords the speaker votes as a peer, and has no casting vote as presiding officer. In the house of commons the speaker has the casting vote in case of a tie, but does not vote as a member.

—TWO-THIRDS VOTE. A majority of two-thirds is required in the house to suspend the rules, to dispense with the morning hour for call of committees, to dispense with private business on Fridays, or to pass in either house a bill vetoed by the president. The latter majority is construed to mean two-thirds of the members present, not of the whole number of members.

—UNANIMOUS CONSENT. (See Consent.)

—VACANCY. Vacancies in the membership of assemblies can usually be filled in accordance with the vote of the majority of members. In congress senatorial vacancies are notified to the governor of the state, who, in the recess of the legislature, may fill the vacancy by appointment, pending the choice of a senator by the legislature when next convened. A vacancy in the house can be filled only by a new election by the people of the congressional district left without a representative. Vacancies in the house of commons are filled by election pursuant to a writ issued out of chancery by warrant from the speaker.

—VETO. In the congress of the United States and in most of the state legislatures any bill passed may be disapproved by the executive for reasons given. This veto may be overruled in congress by a vote of two-thirds of the members of each house present and voting. In parliament, though the crown may legally veto any measure passed, the power has not been exercised for about two centuries (See VETO.)

—VOTE. The sense of an assembly is declared by its votes. In most formal or informal meetings the chair is to put all questions to vote after inquiring if the assembly is ready for the question, in case it is a debatable one. There are various forms of taking a vote: 1, vivâ voce, by the chairman calling successively the ayes and the noes, and declaring the question carried or lost according to the preponderance of voices; 2, by a show of hands, each side in succession holding up the right hand and being counted; 3, by rising and standing until counted on either side. 4, by a count of members passing through tellers, those in favor of the measure going first, and those opposed after, the number of each side being reported by the tellers and declared by the chair; 5, by yeas and nays, where each member answers to the call of his name, and is registered in a formal record; 6, by ballot, or secret written vote—this is used chiefly in the election of officers or committees by the assembly itself. In the house a member has the right to change his vote before the result has been announced by the chair. Every member must vote on each question put, unless excused, or directly interested in the event of the question. The result of every vote, and the names voting on every roll-call, with the absentees, are published in the journal and in the congressional record. In parliament the votes and proceedings are printed and distributed daily. (For methods of voting in parliament, see Division; see also Ballot, Division, Tellers, Yeas and Nays.)

—WAYS AND MEANS. This term, borrowed from the British parliament, implies the government revenues and the methods or provisions for collection of the same. A committee of ways and means was first created in the house of representatives in 1789: it originally consisted of seven
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members: it became a standing committee in 1795. It has since been gradually increased to thirteen members. To it are referred all matters and proposed legislation relating to the revenue and the bonded debt of the United States. The committee of ways and means, having charge of the entire tariff system and internal revenue taxation, as well as of financial measures and the public debt, is a most important body, and its chairmanship is considered the highest office in the gift of the speaker. As the chancellor of the exchequer is the leader of the house of commons, the chairman of the committee of ways and means was formerly accounted the leader of the house of representatives; but since the withdrawal from that committee (in 1865) of all business relating to the expenditures of the government (which is assigned to the committee on appropriations), the ways and means committee has been shorn of much of its power, and its chairman of his prestige as leader. Still, these two committees engross between them the greater part of the time of congress; and in the alternate years, when the session is limited to three months, little other business has a chance of securing attention. To be a member of the committee of ways and means is regarded as a very high position, and commonly excuses those appointed to it from service on other committees. The committee of the senate having charge of the same subjects is styled the committee of finance, and was first organized in 1816. Measures reported by either of these committees are customarily privileged, i.e., to be considered before any others. In parliament the committee of ways and means is constituted directly after the annual opening, but, unlike the American usage, it is not a select or standing committee lasting through the life of the body, but a committee of the whole house; in other words, it is the house itself, presided over by a chairman instead of by the speaker. This official chairman is designated the chairman of the committee of ways and means, and also presides in the committee of supply, and over other committees of the whole house. Like the speaker, he is a salaried officer. The committee of ways and means determines in what manner the necessary funds shall be raised for the public service, as voted by the committee of supply. The most important occasion for which the committee of ways and means is required to sit, is, to receive the financial statement for the year from the chancellor of the exchequer. This is known as the budget. (See BUDGET, vol. i., p. 318.)

—WITHDRAWAL. The right to withdraw a motion or a bill is secured by the rules at any time before a decision or amendment, except after the previous question has been seconded. All incidental questions fall with the withdrawal of the main question. (For withdrawal of papers, see Papers.)

—WITNESSES. The summoning of witnesses to be examined by a committee requires an order of the house, unless the committee is first clothed with power to send for persons and papers. Witnesses are paid $2 a day, and five cents per mile of travel. Failure or refusal of a witness to appear or to testify is a breach of the privileges of the house; besides which the revised statutes make such refusal a misdemeanor punishable by fine and imprisonment. (R. S., sec. 102.) In parliament witnesses must answer on examination before committees, and are sworn at the bar of either house. Recusant witnesses are generally sent to Newgate. (See Privilege.)

—WRIT. This is a process of the house signed by the speaker, attested by the clerk under the seal of the house, and served by the sergeant-at-arms. In parliament the writs for the election of new members are issued by the speaker's warrant addressed to the clerk of the crown, and transmitted by him through the postoffice. Writs of summons for a parliament to meet are issued by the crown, under advice of the privy council. These writs must be issued at least thirty-five days before the time fixed for the convening of the new parliament.

—YEAS AND NAYS. The constitution requires that the yeas and nays of the members of either house shall be entered on the journals at the desire of one-fifth of those present; also that the vote on any bill vetoed by the president shall be recorded by yeas and nays. It is very common for members to demand a vote by yeas and nays, to make a record, or, when dissatisfied with the result of a division by other methods; but whenever less than one-fifth of the members present rise to second the call, the yeas and nays are refused. This vote can not be taken in committee of the whole house; the roll-call once begun can not be interrupted for any purpose. After the roll-call is completed, the names of members who have failed to answer must be called again; after which the full list of yeas and nays must be read, and errors or omissions announced by members corrected.

—In both houses members must answer without debate or reasons assigned for the vote. (See Vote.)

PARTICIPATION IN PROFITS.

PARTICIPATION IN PROFITS. Among the many schemes for healing the apparent breach between labor and capital, a breach that is due in great part to the fact that these two factors of production are supplied by two distinct classes, termed capitalists and laborers, is that of allowing the laborer to share in the profits of the enterprise. "It would be of great importance," wrote Mr. Babbage in 1832, "if, in every large establishment, the mode of payment could be so arranged that every person employed should derive advantage from the success of the whole; and that the profits of each individual should advance, as the factory itself produced profit, without the necessity of making any change in the wages." And he then describes a system that had long been in use among the Cornish mines, which was somewhat like that he proposes for his "new system of manufacturing." This new system was hardly noticed at the time, but it was one of the earliest attempts to introduce participation in profits by the laborer. Strictly speaking, participation is not a form of co-operation, for in the co-operative principle the capitalist and laborer are combined, the capital necessary to the undertaking being furnished by those who also supply the labor; and as they assume all the risk, all the profit or loss is also theirs. In participation, however, the capital is, as a rule, still furnished by one class, and the labor by another; but the laborer is allowed to share in the profits received over and above a certain share which is set apart as a remuneration for the capital employed and for the supervision and management of the undertaking. If the profits are not sufficient to cover this share which belongs to capital, no distribution is made among the workmen.

—In support of participation it is urged that, by stimulating him to make his best endeavors, it increases the efficiency of the workman, this result being attained either by effecting a saving in the material used, or by increasing the absolute product of labor. It influences the moral character of the laborer by making him more industrious (as on this not only depends the total profit but also his share of the profits), more thrifty and provident, and in a measure more independent. By giving him a direct interest in the success of the undertaking it brings him into close relationship with his employer, and differences are less apt to arise between them. On the other hand, it is urged that the laborer is working for a reward that is uncertain, and affected by circumstances beyond his control; that he is likely to become discontented if the profits decrease and his supplementary wages diminish; that in many instances he is forced to become a partner in the undertaking, and his freedom of movement and of contract is to that extent restricted; that he is thus made to share all the risks attending any industrial enterprise, without being allowed any voice in the conduct of the undertaking.

—There are many forms of participation, many of them being but modifications of co-operation. Of the real industrial partnerships the following may be mentioned as typical: In 1842 a Paris tradesman, M. Leclaire, finding that high wages did not produce a corresponding increase in the zeal and diligence of his workmen, and being unable to personally supervise all the details of the work, determined to create a common interest between himself and his employés. The surest way of increasing their efficiency was to proportion their remuneration to the results obtained from their labor, and he therefore proposed to divide among such as he should select a portion of any increased profits that might accrue from their exertions. At the end of the year 5 per cent. of the net profits was to be set aside for the capital employed, and a salary for himself as superintendent; all that remained was to be divided among certain of the laborers in proportion to the wages they had received. The result of the first year was remarkable, and his system, somewhat modified in form, has continued till the present day. The first year he distributed 12,200 francs, no laborer who had worked 300 days in the year receiving less than 450 francs as a supplementary income, equal to two-fifths of his regular salary; in the second year the distributive fund exceeded 17,000 francs, and in the third year it was more than 18,000 francs. Encouraged by this success, the business was remodeled and its operations extended. As at present constituted, the net profits are divided into three parts: one-half is distributed among such workmen as M. Leclaire designates, in proportion to the wages earned by each participant; one-fourth is paid to a provident society, of which all the persons in his employment are members; and one-fourth goes to the partner (patron directeur). The workmen are divided into two classes, one of which, comprising a third of the total number, are entitled to a share in the distribution of profits, but the second class do not share in the profits, but receive a small addition to their daily pay, and are entitled to all the benefits conferred by the provident society. The minor details of the system do not concern us here.

—For many years a large railroad in France (Chemin de fer d' Orléans) set apart 15 per cent. of the surplus or net profits to be divided among certain of its employés. During the first years of the experiment the plan worked fairly well; but as the operations of the road were
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extended, the number of employés was largely increased, the expenses of management became larger the fund for distribution became less, and also the share of each participant, so that while in 1853 the company divided 1,966,963 francs among 3,365 persons, in 1868 it divided only 1,775,559 francs among 11,376 employés. The main object to be gained in this case was to insure as far as possible a greater care of the valuable plant on the part of the employés, and this could be better secured in no other way.

—The third type is to be found in the plan adopted by Messrs. Henry Briggs, Son 8 Company in their Yorkshire collieries. Prior to the passage of the limited liability act such an arrangement as M. Leclaire's could not have been adopted in England without making the workmen liable for the losses incurred, in that they shared in the profits of the undertaking. But this barrier being removed, Messrs. Briggs were among the first to take advantage of participation. In 1865 they formed a limited liability joint stock company, retaining two-thirds of the stock in their own hands. The remaining portion they offered to their employés in shares of £10 each, and stipulated at the same time that whenever the profits of the business should exceed 10 per cent. on the capital employed, one-half of this profit was to be divided among the employés. The plan worked with advantage for a number of years, but disputes arising through the fluctuations in the coal market, the arrangement has been annulled.

—The distribution of profits may either be made in a cash payment at the end of the year, or the share of profit may be capitalized during a certain period, the interest being drawn by the workman, and the principal, on his death, going where he may wish, or, a part may be paid in cash and a part capitalized. The manner of payment differs widely in the various establishments that have adopted the system.

—It is not believed that participation in profits will ever be widely in use, as it can be successfully applied to only a limited number of occupations. "The fund on which participation draws is the surplus profit realized in consequence of the enhanced efficiency of the work done under its stimulating influence. Such extra profit is therefore obtainable wherever workmen have it in their power to increase the quantity, improve the quality, or diminish the cost price, of their staple of production by more effective production, by increased economy in the use of tools and materials, and by a reduction in the cost of superintendence. In other words, the surplus profit realizable will depend on the influence which manual labor is capable of exerting upon production. Evidently, therefore, this influence will be greatest in branches of industry where the skill of the laborer plays the leading part, where the outlay on tools and materials bears a small ratio to the cost of production, and where individual superintendence is difficult and expensive. It will, on the contrary, be least effective in industries where mechanism is the principal agency, where the interest on capital fixed in machinery is the chief element of cost prices, and where the workmen, assembled in large factories, can be easily and effectively superintended" Another limitation lies in the fact that its application depends, in every case, on the will of the employer. "It is not to be expected," says W. T. Thornton, "that employers will often be found entering into special engagements with their laborers, in trades in which such special engagements must necessarily result in pecuniary loss to themselves; even in trades to which the bonus system is best adapted, unless employers choose to adopt it of their own accord, there are, of course, no means of compelling them. In the utmost development, therefore, of which it is susceptible, the partnership or bonus system can never affect more than a portion of the laboring population." Still another objection is named by Thorold Rogers: "that it necessitates the abandonment of that secrecy which it is believed is essential at all times, and particularly in some emergencies, to success. The value of secrecy may be overrated, probably is; but its significance is felt, and will in all likelihood be felt more and more as the principle of limited liability is adopted." It is not known that this policy has been adopted to any extent in the United States.

PARTIES

PARTIES, Political. I. Idea of Parties; Government Party; Opposition. Throughout all history we find that, wherever an active life of the people and of the state has been developed, political parties have sprung into existence. An absence of political parties is observed only where there prevails a passive indifference to all public concerns, or where tyrannical oppression by the ruling powers prevents all common manifestation of opinion and aspirations by whole groups of the population. In such cases, however the power and tendency of the people to form parties exist, if they are at all capable of political life; but this power and tendency at one time lie dormant, while at another they lack the air and light necessary to their growth, and the room they require for action. At times the impulse to form political parties, when suppressed in political life, is directed into other channels; it passes into the religious or ecclesiastical domain, and makes existing scientific, artistic and social differences more marked. Between such parties and political parties there exists a certain kind of elective affinity. Thus, a reactionary party in the church will, as a rule, in matters political, sympathize with a party of absolutism, the old traditional theological school with a conservative party, and the critical theological school or party, by way of preference,
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with the liberal parties in politics. In this work we have to do exclusively with political parties, and we can notice non-political parties only in so far as they are attracted to or repulsed by political parties.

—The most gifted and freest nations politically are precisely those that have the most sharply defined parties; for the most important phenomena in the life of the state are conditioned by party struggles. It is only through the struggle and interaction of opposing forces that all the hidden wealth of a people's powers is made clearly manifest. This proves the necessity and utility of the formation of parties. Parties are not a serious evil to the state, as many narrow and over-anxious minds are inclined to think. It reflects no glory on a statesman to stand aloof from his party, and it is no commendable virtue in the citizen of a state to belong to no party. For parties are, in the very nature of the case, the necessary manifestations of the innermost impulses of the public heart of the nation.

—Parties, as implied by the term itself, are always only a part of the nation. A party, accordingly, can possess only the consciousness of one part of the nation, and must not identify itself with the whole, the people, the state. Hence, one party may combat other parties, but it must not ignore them, nor wish to destroy them. One party can not subsist alone; it owes its existence and development only to the opposing party.

—Precisely because the prince in a monarchical country represents in his own person the unity of the state, and hence of all persons in the state, it is exacted of him, and almost exclusively of him, that he shall not espouse the cause of any party, and that he shall tolerate and respect all parties, each according to its character and rights. He may, indeed, choose to rely on any one party, because the latter, at a given time, seems particularly fitted to determine the policy of the state, and he may also have just cause for sharply watching the doings of parties that seem to endanger the public well-being. He may also, without sacrificing that impartiality (and impartiality is always his duty), declare himself in favor of one or as opposed to another party, according to the attitude of such party to the state, and according to that party's importance to the well-being of the state. But he incurs the risk of loading himself with the ugly appearance of being partial when he does this in a manner not perfectly warranted, and when his declaration of preference can be attributed to his personal inclination toward a party or to his personal aversion to the opposing party. A premature declaration of preference will, moreover, expose him to the danger of being compelled to disavow himself if, contrary to his expectation, the party hated or dreaded by him should become so powerful that it could not be refused the exercise of a decisive influence in the government, or if the party which he had approved or recommended at the elections had been rejected by the electors, so that he would be finally compelled to drop it. It is, accordingly, a political principle with wise princes to avoid declaring for or against any party in the state without the most urgent motives.

—This, however, does not apply to the case of ministers, nor to any of the other officers of the state, and just as little does it apply to the government of a republic. Still, whenever these latter act in their official capacity, they should not act as mere party men, for the office is essentially instinct with the spirit of the whole state, and any official act is at the same time an act of the state. But public law, with its powers and duties, knows nothing of parties, the regular law of the state is the common law fixed for all, the law which imposes a limit to the agitation and struggles of parties. The judge and the administrative officer should disregard all parties, and not perform their duties with the view of helping or hindering any party. Parties play an important rôle only when the stir of fresh, new life is felt; in other words, when political life begins. But the official duty of impartiality does not exclude an official from sharing freely in political life with those who are of the same mind with himself, or from taking whatever side he prefers. Unlike the prince, he is not the personification of the whole. He is, on the one hand, as an official, an organ and a representative of the state; and on the other hand, as a private individual invested with all the political rights of a citizen, he enjoys a position as to party by virtue of which he is entitled to seek his party fellows and to league himself with them. The greatest statesmen of Rome and England were always both impartial magistrates and acknowledged party leaders. Only, as a matter of course, their political action should be limited, conditioned and moderated by the inviolability of the impartial position of the official. As it is incumbent on-the historian to be impartial, that he should truthfully describe the condition of all parties, and judge them with fairness, but not that he should be a member of no party, or be a purely passive mirror reflecting with indifference the pictures of a nation's life; so it is incumbent on the statesman and the official, and in a still higher degree, that they should be impartial, but not that they should be non-party men.

—For these reasons a so-called government party does not deserve the favor which it has frequently received from the ruling powers. Every party, when its leaders have been called into office, becomes, in a certain sense, the government party, for a time at least, and as long as its leaders remain in harmony with the principles and tendencies of the party. Yet, in such a case, the term government party implies no party principle, but only indicates that the party has actually attained to power and influence. The very same party, however, without any change of principles or aims, may become a party of opposition, when its leaders again lose the chief offices of government, or when, remaining in office, they adopt a tendency hostile to, or when they eventually assume an unsatisfactory attitude toward, the party to which they had hitherto adhered.

—But by the government party is sometimes understood a party whose principle
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consists in adhering at all times to the government, and in supporting the government, of whatever persons it may consist and whatever tendency it may follow; a party which adheres to the government when the latter enacts reactionary measures, and still stands by it when any reformatory change of its system happens to take place. A government party in this sense consists mostly of men whose personal interests make them dependent mainly on the good will of the government, and who support it in the hope of emolument and preferment through the favor of government, while from its disfavor they have a motive to fear for their positions or economical well-being. Under certain circumstances a party of this kind may prove useful to a government, because its votes always possess a certain weight; but woe to the government that in critical moments relies on a government party of this kind, and seeks in it its last and only support. As in such a party there is no inward strength, it can give no support, and as it receives its impulses from the existing government, it must waver when that government itself is shaken; and as, above all, it is always resolved to serve the ministers of the government, who have, it may be, only recently stepped into office, it prepares for a change when there is any prospect of a change, and deserts the banner of its old, defeated leaders, to follow the fife and drum of the new victors. Such a party, accordingly, enjoys no genuine respect, neither that of the ministers, who use it, nor that of the people, who expect nothing good from it. It scarcely deserves the name of political party at all, because it has no political convictions, and no political aspirations. It is merely an appendage to the ruling power, without moral worth or political dignity. It is generally accessible to and inclined to corruption, and usually ready to bargain away its fidelity and its services. Such a party, therefore, is unable to maintain itself in a manly nation, with a highly developed political party life; it is fated to be broken up and thrust aside by other and genuine parties. Yet, in the old monarchies of the European continent, such parties have still a certain importance, sometimes in connection with other old established court parties.

—As a contrast to what is known as the government party in this objectionable sense, we have what is known as the party of opposition; but by this term we do not mean that other no less objectionable party, whose vital principle consists in opposition to the government, and which does not combat the policy of the government because it regards that policy as unsound or its success as dangerous, but solely because it is the policy of the government. The government party may be simply submissive, and blindly devoted to the government; a party of opposition such as we have here described, on the other hand, is to an excess obstinate and odious. The former always tamely follows in the wake of government, while the latter, at every step, thwarts it by distrust and antagonism. Both, accordingly, are unhealthy phenomena in the public life of a people. At times such a party of opposition may find favor with the people, just as the government party does with the powerful. But its negative qualities have only the appearance of utility to the commonwealth or of care for the interests of the people. The moving principle in it is certainly not egotism, as in the government party, but obstinacy, defiant aggressiveness, obstruction to all political authority; in a word, anarchy. It does not deserve the favor of any nation, any more than a purely government party deserves that of the government. When, between the years 1820 and 1830, the German chambers witnessed such opposition parties at work by the side of government parties, and courting popular favor, it was only the sign of a still unripe and sickly political life, for then the belief was still widely spread among the people, that only the man who opposed the government, and only as long as he opposed it, could be a patriot, and would devote himself heart and soul to the people. From the mere possibility of so dangerous an error, we may readily infer the existing moral rottenness of those governments.

—After this brief explanation, we may define political parties as follows: They are the free, social groups within the state, held together for common action by the ties of the same or closely related fundamental political principles, ideas and aspirations.

—II. Political Parties and Factions. We distinguish parties from factions. Factions are but the caricature of parties. Parties are necessary to the life of the state, and in so far useful; factions are unnecessary and always injurious. In healthy political life parties must be developed, while factions gain in power under unhealthy conditions. Real development is promoted by parties; corruption and the decay of states show the effects of faction.

—On what does this distinction depend? Language here is not as safe and steadfast in its distinguishing powers as science would wish. We speak properly of a political party, when that party represents a political principle, or pursues a political tendency; political, that is, compatible with the existence of the state, and directed to the well-being of society. A political party may, indeed, exhibit great defects of character; it may employ wrong means, and pursue foolish aims. But it should never attack the existence of the state, or consciously pursue tendencies injurious to it. When it does this, it debases itself into a faction. Factions never serve the state; they are above all mindful of self; they pursue egotistic, and not political, aims. In the conflict between the well-being of the state and private interests, they unhesitatingly prefer the latter and sacrifice the former.

—A faction can not easily rise to the noble position of a political party, although this may not altogether be impossible; but a political party may easily degenerate into a faction. As soon as self-seeking has become its ruling passion throughout all its actions, as
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soon as it becomes heedless of its duties toward the country, and refuses to acknowledge its submission to the whole, it has entered the paths of faction, and we must deny it the honorable name of a political party. As every man is at the same time an individual apart, and a member of a community, of his nation, and, finally, of humanity, so also the various social groups possess this same kind of dualistic existence. They are associations with particular interests, and they are also parts of a larger whole. Political parties are animated and determined by this common spirit, although their egotistic self-love and party interest never become wholly extinct. Factions, on the contrary, are associations in which this self-seeking side has grown so powerful that it aims at subjecting to it the public well-being, and to sacrifice the state to its particular interests; although, as a matter of fact, even in factions the public well-being is seldom completely lost sight of. The contrast between a political party and a faction is, therefore, of a nature such that it manifestly suggests a certain affinity between them. They only follow opposite currents. Accordingly, as public spirit or private interest prevails in either of these groups of men, it may at one time be a political party, and at another a faction. When a party holds its meetings, chooses its leaders, comes to an agreement and passes resolutions; when it founds and supports organs to give expression to its opinions, and combats its adversaries; or when any individual member of the party, as far as is possible without violating higher duties, submits his individual opinion and inclination to his party, and follows the leaders of his party as soldiers follow their general: in all this there is nothing that can be called factious. If the party is to possess power and influence, it must organize itself, and display its activity in public life, at elections and in deliberative councils, as a closely compact body. But when party zeal and party passion preponderate to such a point as to prefer to tear the country to pieces rather than join hands for the sake of the common weal; when one party, upon gaining power, directs public affairs as a party government, using its power in the oppression and persecution of all who profess different opinions; when parties league themselves with the enemies of the state, and deliver the country over to their power: all proceedings of this kind exclude the true idea of a political party, and faction has usurped its place.

—III. Names and Kinds of Parties. Different names do not always indicate different kinds of parties, and the names as well as the objects concerning which parties contend may frequently be simply accidental. People may quarrel and divide themselves into parties about a garter, or the shape of a hat; and in the case of more than one historical party division it is difficult to tell what was the cause that divided the nation. Even a mere whim, or difference of taste, the partiality to green or red, or vice versa, has parted society into hostile groups. Yet parties, in the earnest consciousness of their differences, often select colors only as party symbols, and in such case become known by their colors, as, for instance, the green and blue parties in the old Byzantine empire, the red and white rose in mediæval England, and the red (ultra-revolutionary) and black (clerical) parties of modern times. Parties in general, and factions still more so, love to distinguish themselves from each other and from the indifferent multitude by symbolical badges. Hence, they have their banners, cockades, colored caps, ribbons, and their peculiar costumes.

—The more futile the causes that separate parties, or the less any political principles and aims determine their formation, the less also can they be called political parties in the proper sense of the term, and the more readily will such associations degenerate into factions. Political science does not concern itself with these non-political parties; and just as little can it pay any attention to purely accidental parties. Although at times they may assert their influence on practical politics, political science is unable to fix them, because they are not determined by political principles. On the other hand, the following kinds of parties deserve mention: 1. Religio-political parties. Denominational parties, as such, do not belong to these; but, when starting from different religious or ecclesiastical opinions or tendencies, they divide politically, and seek to influence the life of the state, they in a certain respect become political parties. This species of party division in the middle ages, as, for instance, that between Christians and Mohammedans, had a decided influence on public life, and this party division is even still sufficiently felt. Even in modern European parliaments we still hear of catholic and orthodox Lutheran parties, of ultramontanes and pietists. But these are spurious kinds of party, and, therefore, wherever political life is developed, they are banished from the arena of political parties to their own sphere, to wit, the domain of religious and ecclesiastical life. As the cause of the formation of this kind of parties has nothing to do with the state, and as their aims are not political, it must always be considered an abuse, when, in the modern state, they demean themselves as political parties. Religion seldom gains by such demeanor on its part, and politics is always injured by them.

—2. Parties may also, in a temporal, but not purely political sense, be divided according to nations, which, however, does not by any means constitute a normal division (such as Neo-Latins and Germans in the ancient German-Roman states, English, Scots and Irish in Great Britain, and Germans and Czecks in Bohemia; or according to tribes, as Franks, Old-Bavarians, in Bavaria; or according to the social order, as patricians, plebeians, clergy and nobility, nobility and bourgeoisie). Nations, tribes and estates, such as the third estate, possess in fact an importance which is not exclusively political, but above all civil and social. They also form firmly established wholes, and would form a too solid basis for political parties, which must never cease to feel themselves parts subordinate
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to the state. When, accordingly, parties are based upon nationalities, or when they are divided into tribes, there is danger that they may destroy the unity of the state. But if the unity of the state is to be preserved, the parties in the state should cross and unite the different nations, tribes and estates that exist within the political body, thus welding the parts into unity. When parties and estates are coincident this danger is not so great, for the estates know that they are only a part of the people, and that they can not form a state of themselves alone. Yet even here, party differences, allied with such mighty constituents of the state organism, differences thus powerful, lasting and bold, may by such alliance seriously threaten the internal peace of the state and public order.

—3. In the middle ages parties had still, for the most part, either a religious, national or an estate character. It is a sign of political progress when parties begin to divide according to definite constitutional principles, for then political ideas, and not merely the tradition of a race or of a particular class or calling, begin to unite those together who are of the same mind, and to separate them from their opponents. Parties of this nature are aristocrats and democrats, royalists and republicans, constitutionalists and feudalists, unionists and federalists, nationalists and particularists, etc. Sometimes these parties continue to rest in part upon a difference of estate or class: thus, the aristocratic and feudal party in Europe usually derives its main support from the nobility, the constitutional party from the third estate, and the democrats from the lower classes. But they are no longer confined within the narrow limits of an estate; the political opinion of one class or estate invades the others, and draws toward it those who are of the same way of thinking.

—Yet these are only transitory political parties, which happen to arise during constitutional struggles for the transformation of the existing constitution, and which disappear when that struggle has been brought to a close and a new constitution is introduced and generally acknowledged. The task of the constitution consists in realizing and giving effect to its principles, and there is after this no need of constitutional parties, because all views that could possibly claim any political importance are supposed to have found their expression in the organs of the constitutional system itself, as for instance, the aristocratic elements in an upper house, and the constitutional and democratic elements in a lower house. Such political parties, accordingly, work toward their own destruction, because they invariably perish after obtaining the victory; they desire to die as political parties, that they may rise again as political powers; they desire to become members of the body politic itself. Hence, their principles are not party principles, but constitutional principles.

—4. The highest and purest form of political parties is incontestably that of those which are determined by exclusively political and not religious or social contrasts or differences, and which at the same time permanently accompany the public life.

—Wachsmuth, in his Geschichte der politischen Parteiungen, 1832, advanced the opinion that, "in the history of the human race it must be accepted as a fundamental law of the universe, that, on the whole, there certainly is a progress toward the better, but it must also be admitted that the history of political parties has no share in that progress. Whether good or bad, such as they were from time out of mind, they remain to this very day." I also believe that a "progress toward the better" is perceptible in the history of political parties; although what is fundamental in human nature, on which parties depend, has remained the same, and when human passions have once been aroused, the man of to-day is as far from being exempt from the risk of relapsing into extreme brutality and barbarity as was the man of a thousand or two thousand years ago. The French nation in the eighteenth century claimed to stand at the head of European civilization, and yet this did not save it from the horrors of the reign of terror during the French revolution. Yet as in war, so also have the contentions of parties become, on the whole, less cruel and brutal. In spite of all the horrors that still disgrace our age, civilization has at least somewhat moderated the savage hatred of parties.

—Yet I regard these as most manifest symptoms of improvement: that an ever higher form of party seems to have replaced the old one, that parties by degrees have laid aside other differences belonging to the domain of nature and social culture, and that they are more and more determined by purely political principles. The contrasts and differences of liberals and conservatives, of radicals and absolutists, are purely political, pervade all classes of the population, and are in every instance determined by different fundamental political ideas. These parties, and parties of this nature, although they often bear different names, are markedly the fruit of the political culture of modern times.

—IV. Rohmer's Doctrine of Parties. Friedrich Rohmer's doctrine of parties, which was first announced theoretically and put into practice in 1842, during the party contest in Zürich, was in 1844 expounded by Rohmer in a work, the thoughtful contents and splendor of style of which were acknowledged even by its bitterest enemies. Rohmer's work has unquestionably exercised a great influence in the elucidation of political ideas; many of the thoughts which it contains have since become the common property of men of political culture throughout Europe, and many of its sentences have been plagiarized by well-known writers. Yet the effect of the book was below what might have been expected from the high merits of its principles and style of exposition. There was an obstacle in the way of the unprejudiced examination and acceptance of the new doctrine of parties, in the suspicion, entertained by a large portion of the party of progress, that the book was not the exposition of a scientific conviction, but a party document, written to divide
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the party of progress by an artificial and skillfully contrived confusion of ideas, to humble the radicals, and to support the power of the Swiss liberal conservatives. This suspicion was wholly unfounded; his doctrine is, on the whole, rather a necessary consequence of Rohmer's psychological views, and it is decidedly favorable to the formation of liberal states. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the circumstances under which the doctrine originated might have suggested a suspicion of this kind, and that at the first formulation of the doctrine the passionate party struggles in which the author was involved, in certain particular points, may have exerted an unfavorable influence in some places. A no smaller hindrance than this wrong suspicion lay in the as yet undeveloped condition of political party life in Germany, people being still unaccustomed there to look at the political spirit from a psychological point of view. If the book had been written in 1849 instead of in 1844, it would have been more easily intelligible to the bulk of the German nation.

—The fundamental idea of the doctrine is this: "As the state must be understood in the light of human nature and receive its explanation from the facts of human nature, so also must political parties in their natural causes be explained by the facts of human life. To understand the state as a political body, I must first understand the elements of the human mind: to understand the life of the state, I must investigate the laws of its development." (§ 17.) "This development manifests itself in the age stages of the life of man. The development of the state itself constitutes its history; but parties are the independent groupings of the different age stages of human life, by themselves and side by side with each other." (§ 217.) "As we distinguish four stages in the life of man—the boy, the young man (adolescens), the tried man (juvenis), and the old man (senex)—so may we distinguish four fundamental types of party. At the height of virile life stand the young man and the tried man. In these the active powers of mind hold the supremacy; in the former the generative and creative forces of character and mind, and in the latter the preserving and purifying forces. Liberal principles accord with the mind of the young man, and conservative principles commend themselves to the mind of the tried man. In boyhood and in old age, on the contrary, the passive forces of mind are found in the foreground, in the boy in an ascending, but in the old man in a descending, direction. The boy has a vivid intuitive power and imagination, and a sensitive heart, but creative energy is still undeveloped in him. The old man has, in common with woman, susceptibility and impressionableness of nature, dexterity in action, certainty and coolness in calculation, rapidity and clearness of comprehension. The boy is a radical; the old man, absolute.

—As in the organic course of nature every man passes through the different age stages, and experiences this change of strength and of impulse, so also does nature impress on individuals, irrespective of their age, as individuals, this diversity of the leading and determining forces of mind. There are men who as individuals are born boys, and who remain boys in mind and character through life. Others have as individuals youthful natures, others are endowed with the spirit and character of the tried man, while still others are as individuals old from childhood. Thus, Pericles was of a youthful nature, Cæsar naturally a man, Alcibiades a boy, and Augustus by nature an old man. Most men in their individual nature are not complete and well balanced, but mixed and defective. Many, for instance, are boyish or old at heart, but manly in spirit; or old in mind, but young at heart. As regards politics, mind is the decisive element. The mass of men do not individually belong to the higher stages. There are but few really liberal or truly conservative individuals. The bulk of men are by nature born old or boyish." (§ 35.) "That is, only in few men, considered as individuals, is the reason that discerns and regulates, or the creative power of speech, the prevailing power of the mind; most men have certainly a sensitive or receptive mind, are eager to learn, have rather a passive than an active mind, with the mental constitution of boys or older people. Parties, accordingly, are not to be compared with the age stages themselves. The differences of their inclinations and faculties are rather traceable to the natural difference of individual disposition, in which the difference of the age stages is permanently stamped and expressed. And because parties thus have their foundation in human nature, they also all have a natural right. Some correspond to the higher, and others to the lower, development of life; and from this correspondence their natural order and sub-order result. Their explanation is their judgment. Only the manly parties, the liberals and conservatives, are called to the government of the state, but not the two extreme parties, the radicals and absolutists. Their doctrine combats the illusion that radicalism should be considered as the only resolute and logical form of liberalism, as also the supposition that conservatism, in its highest power, becomes absolutism. Their doctrine insists, rather, on the distinction between the two parties in the ascending line of development, boyish radicalism, and youthful, manly liberalism, and between the two parties, in the descending line of development, conservatism and absolutism; and it demands the subordination of radicals to liberals, of absolutists to conservatives. Only when liberals and conservatives are at the helm does mind prevail over matter, and force of character over excitability. The struggles of parties are the following: of liberalism against conservatism, e.g., plebeians and patricians in the palmy days of Rome; of radicalism against liberalism, e.g., the English radicals against the whigs; of absolutism against conservatism, e.g., Carlists and moderantists in Spain, high tories and moderates in England; of conservatism against radicalism,
Edition: current; Page: [101]e.g., the European struggle of the tories under Pitt against the French revolution; of liberalism against absolutism, e.g., Luther against the popes of his time, and O'Connell against orangemen; of radicalism against absolutism, e.g., the struggle of the French revolution against the monarchies of the last century." (§ 16.)

—The alliances of parties are also manifold. The most dangerous to the healthy life of the state is the alliance of both the extreme parties, of radicals and absolutists. The alliance of liberals and conservatives is the most favorable to its normal development. If the development of the state requires new institutions, the liberals naturally step to the front, and the alliance will be a conservative liberal one; if there be question of preserving the threatened order of things, the conservative element must needs preponderate, and the alliance assumes a liberal conservative character.

—When Rohmer's doctrine of parties first originated at Zürich in 1842, the preservation of the existing order of things seems to have been the task on hand; a liberal conservative policy was proclaimed, and the attempt was made to found a liberal conservative party. Ideas were at that time expressed with great distinctness and clearness, and these ideas had an influence that can not be denied. But the first attempt at the formation of a party was made under very unfavorable conditions, and attained only an incomplete development. The liberal elements chanced to be too weakly represented, and the young party was unable to keep pace with the stronger movement of the epoch, in which liberal and radical elements had become indissolubly mingled together. Its principle, however, was able to tide over the revolution, and thus passed to a part of its former adversaries, but the party itself, which first had recognized that principle, was dissolved. While Germany at first took but little notice of it, English and French statesmen, on the contrary, took up the principle, yet without altogether understanding the full depth of its significance; they were, moreover, affected by the same false tendency from which the Swiss liberal conservative party had suffered. Guizot attempted to found in France a liberal conservative party, but he ignored the liberal aspirations of the times, and insisted in a doctrinarian manner on preserving the untenable. In England, however, Sir Robert Peel was more fortunate in organizing a liberal conservative policy. Since that time, however, this idea has entered into the party movements of almost all continental states, and without it modern party contentions can nowhere be rightly understood. If the differences of political parties depend on the difference of natural individual disposition, the necessity of parties, and, further still, their legitimateness, follows as a consequence; for anything that has the roots of its existence in nature, has a right to have its existence respected. All laws and public measures, accordingly, that aim at the control of parties, or at the suppression of particular, even of extreme, parties, violate the natural law of creation, which has produced this multiplicity, and which, even through the conflict of differences, creates the highest phenomena of human life.

—The choice of a definite party, accordingly, is only in a secondary sense the work of personal insight, and of free will; for every individual in the first place feels the impulse and attraction of nature. The man who is by nature a radical will feel himself drawn toward the radical party. The man who is naturally old will be drawn rather toward the party of absolutists. But, as in all human things, the force of natural instinct is not endowed with an absolutely compulsory power, man possesses a power of mind and character over himself; he is able to overcome his own impulses, when he believes them to be foolish or injurious. Other motives and interests modify the differences which distinguish the natural individual disposition, and sometimes impel those who are naturally radical to submit to the direction of the conservatives, or drive them into the camp of the absolutists. Education, with the power of ideas and habits which it gives, has frequently the most decided influence on the choice of a party. Experience and study may also induce an individual to profess different principles and tendencies, and hence to adhere to a party different from that which we should have expected, from his individual nature, he would ally himself to.

—Nature herself has taken care that the dangerous one-sidedness of parties should not completely isolate men from one another, by compelling every individual man in his lifetime to pass through all the different age stages, and thus to experience in himself and in his own near kindred and acquaintances the nature of other parties than the party to which he belongs by his own individual nature. Any attentive and thinking man will hence judge more broadly and fairly of others when he has an eye to the many-sided teachings of nature. Nature has a healing remedy for the arrogance of extreme parties, and gives a warning to individuals to join rather the more manly central parties; and it directs all parties always to submit to the whole by manifesting, as in the organization of the human body, complete human nature, and all the faculties of the soul in the proper relation of order and subordination. It hardly needs to be recalled to mind, that the following characteristics of the four parties are merely typical. Real life scarcely ever expresses altogether completely and purely the typical, fundamental idea, but only approaches it more or less closely. But when science in grand outlines sketches the natural types, it in so doing elucidates and arranges the otherwise unfathomable, chaotic variety of phenomena.

—1. Radicalism. Radicalism is illustrated and explained by the nature of the boy. Although the delineation is made with great skill, and is true in the main, the picture is not free from a certain exaggeration, or from polemical bitterness, which can be explained only by the time in which it was drawn. Hence its dark sides have manifestly been painted
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with greater relish and more nervous strokes than its bright sides. The author, Theodore Rohmer, in his later years himself admitted this.

—He introduces his description by a reference to "the spirit of contradiction, which begins to stir within every man, after the development of consciousness. This spirit, this opposition for the sake of opposition, in faith, science, church and state, is the main trait of radicalism." (§ 45.) "Radicalism is very well adapted to oppose when, from the sphere of an inferior criticism, it pursues the sins of absolutism, when it hastens the march of conservatism, and clears the road for liberalism; ever blaming, hurrying, agitating, but incapable of ruling; productive of misfortune and of terrible disturbances as soon as it seizes the reins of government. Hence, it is a frequent occurrence in parliamentary states, that the most brilliant leaders of the opposition betray a complete incapacity when they are called into power. Government and childhood exclude each other." (§§50-52.)

—"The mobility of the boy is unbounded. Quiet, rest and self-containment are impossible to him. He loves change and variety to a passionate degree, and his ardent nature is continually in search of novelty. To this must be added his unhealthy longing to become a grown man. He sees the adult people around him, and his most powerful wish is to be like them. He imitates them, and plays the man. 'Novelty and progress' are the watch-words of radicalism. But 'novelty' is not reform; it proceeds from the impulse to change, and, like the latter, it is variable in itself, and 'progress' is only the impulse toward progress. He wants to reap before he has well sown; he is given to excess, as was the French revolution, or he is compelled to give himself up, as Joseph II had to give himself up. Radicalism borrows from liberalism, and imitates it. Radicalism everywhere in Europe, through organic self-deception, regards itself as liberalism." (§ 46.)

—"If the boy were not altogether by nature incapable of ruling, and relegated to obedience, he certainly would be thus incapable and relegated to a very high degree by his complete lack of experience. Experience can not be learned, but must be acquired in the school of life. The inability to learn from experience accompanies boyish natures through life. It was precisely this inability which so deeply embittered Napoleon against the radical ideologists, and for very good reason. So destitute of meaning and experience is radicalism. When Cola Rienzi believed that he could resuscitate the power of Rome by means of the mere name of the tribunate, and the forms of ancient Rome; or when the German Burschenschaft thought to restore the spirit of the empire by restoring the title of German empire, they dreamt like inexperienced boys. If Joseph II. in Austria, Pombal in Portugal, and Struensee in Denmark, had taken counsel of experience, they would have understood that it is impossible by any number of decrees to suddenly extirpate the deeply rooted past." (§§ 53, 54.)

—"As the boy is complete neither in his mind, which is in process of development, nor in his sensitive faculties, which can be ripened only through life, it follows that he must learn. To learn is not to know, but only a preparation for knowledge. But the boy, although desirous of learning, at every step which he takes in learning from others, believes himself to be in possession of real knowledge. On the other hand, we all know how difficult it is to overcome the aversion of a boy for methodical learning. His wild disposition carries him away from it, while his instinct demands culture and schooling; between the two he remains in a wavering state. In this manner radicalism has ever displayed either barbaric ignorance or an exaggerated craving for formal culture, schooling and enlightenment. Rousseau, the father of modern radicalism, instead of culture wished to see men in the rude state of nature; our modern radicals, radical in their demand for culture, cry loudly for education and popular culture as only boys cry for schooling." (§§ 56, 57.)

—"The powers of the boy are naturally adapted to mental appropriation. His susceptibility is marvelous, his imagination indefatigable; but reason, will-power and all deeper insight are absent. The boy, in a word, is brimful of talent not of mind. Talent is the characteristic mark of radicals; but talent has no standing in any court for depth of intellect. History affords us a very powerful example of this truth. In the three parliaments of the French revolution, in the constituent assembly, in the legislative assembly and convention, there was a galaxy of men of talent, partly of the most remarkable kind, and of such variety and number combined as the world had but seldom witnessed. The names, which at that time followed one another in rapid succession on the scene, still remain the pride of the French nation. And what became of all these men of talent, when a great spirit, when Napoleon, put in his appearance? It seemed as if the one great mind alone sufficed to fill the vast field which a hundred men of talent had divided among themselves. How even the most renowned among them shrank into insignificance before Napoleon: men like Sieyès, Talleyrand, Cambaceres, and even Carnot! Yet Mirabeau maintained himself; in the midst of all these radical men of talent he was the only intellect." (§§ 59,60.)

—"The boy, like the poet, lives in a world of ideals; he knows the real world only in miniature, and even in miniature he has no thorough knowledge of it. It is perfectly natural that he should build himself a world of poetical and fantastic day-dreams, of castles in the air. Radicalism has also created a world of ideals; it, too, is clothed with a charm which has misled whole nations. A world, full of freedom, happiness and bliss; a world, in which all men embrace one another, and live together like brothers, in which everlasting peace reigns, and in which an everlasting community of all spiritual and corporeal possessions obtains: a world of this kind, such as was proclaimed by the religious visionaries of the middle ages, and by the political dreamers
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of the nineteenth century—how charming it always appears to the senses and to the heart, in spite of the fact that experience and reason have so often told us that it crumbles away in the presence of reality. The attempts of radical world-improvers belong as little to real politics as poetry itself belongs to politics; but for life they possess a truth similar to that of poetry. In fact, what happiness the boy dreams of as in store for him in his manhood; of the freedom that he will one day enjoy, and the pleasure of a thousand circumstances in life! If he reaches manhood, and if fate favors him, he certainly may find happiness and freedom, yet it will be a kind different from what he had dreamed of; he will then smile at the dreams of his boyhood, and instead of these he will try to enjoy the sober reality of the present." (§§ 63, 64.)

—"The boy's understanding leads him to the formal branches of knowledge. Even his imagination, when he applies it to scientific questions, guides him into the field of abstraction. All radicalism is at all times formal, mathematical and abstract, when it invades the domain of manhood. Its culture and legislation are full of formalism: its conception of life and history are abstract; the radical state is mechanical without a suspicion even of organism; it is constructed, as Aristotle expresses it, instead of for it adds, subtracts, compounds and distributes men and affairs as if they were only arithmetical quantities." (§§ 65, 66.)

—"Culture and education, as means substitutive of nature, are the one great idea which has become with modern radicals the most predominant idiosyncrasy. That idea proceeds from the boy's capacity for education. The boy sees in education a substitute for innate gifts, and even considers it the creator of individual nature. He believes that education can make fools clever, and the stupid intelligent; that it is in the power of education to make all men equally learned, equally intelligent; that through the same means of education all classes can be raised to the same height, and that the crowd can be extirpated forever. Of all radical ideas, none has been more widely spread in Germany than this, and partly for the reason that the Germans, of all nations, are endowed with great capacity for comprehensive and genuine culture, and because they love education even too much not to easily over-estimate it. Instead of adapting culture to different natures, character is indiscriminately made to adapt itself to one and the same form of education. Happy age, when all Germans shall be educated and geistreich. Stupidity, which hitherto, at times, has been modestly silent, would then reign supreme, while mediocrity has already begun to rule in consequence of that very idiosyncrasy." (§ 71.)

—"As in the case of women, the boy only knows one reason for everything. The understanding, which is not as yet developed in the boy, superordinates and subordinates intuition, which he possesses, and conceives objects, notwithstanding their variety, as a complete and undivided whole. How radicalism everywhere, both in the material and the intellectual spheres, is urged by the impulse toward 'leveling,' needs no further examples.

—The boy moves with originality on the field of speculation. Man, in childhood, indulges in a number of questions, which he is unable to answer as a man. He thinks about the origin of the world, about the reasons of being. But he does not investigate for the sake of a higher purpose, but merely because investigation is a pleasure to him. Abstraction, as abstraction merely, satisfies him. The two characteristic marks of all radical speculation are: an ideally mingling the reason of the world's existence with the world itself (pantheism), practically, the supremacy of abstraction over life." (§ 74.)

—"Radicalism, like childhood, is good and rich in blessings, and when in its right place its effects are unequaled: but it degenerates and becomes worthless when it swerves from the right path, and when placed at the helm becomes a prey to demoniacal powers. From what evils it frees us, from what abuses, from what an oppressive load it unburdens Europe, by its ever-living, stimulating power and active foresight; how much of evil it does away with, how much of what is useless it removes, and how much of what is now it has encouraged—all this is well known in recent times. If it had been able to keep within the bounds of the opposition, if it had surrendered the direction of affairs to liberalism, instead of thwarting it, its effects would surely have been a blessing. The country may be considered fortunate in which radicalism keeps up an opposition without encroaching in public affairs, but keeps its energetic action within the bounds of modesty. Woe to the country in which it rules supreme. Waste of mind and emptiness of heart, the ruin of the past and the decay in the present, are the signs that accompany it." (§ 77.)

—"The boy believes that he shows courage when he displays only impudence, and energy when he makes a manifestation of obstinacy. He indeed possesses courage to do many things which the grown man can not attain to, because to such courage belongs a barbaric recklessness toward all existing rights, relations and institutions, or an unparalleled degree of levity. Yet these are precisely the qualities by which radicalism has been able to impart an occasional bold forward movement to the wheels of history, which in certain cases it would have been beyond the power of even the most advanced liberalism to impart. They are also the qualities of which Providence frequently avails itself for the attainment of its designs. Radicalism not only vents itself against old institutions, when they have become rotten; it attacks the past and pulls down everything with relish; the radicalism of the better kind does this, because it carries within it the organic delusion that it can create a new world from the wreck of the old, and the worse kind of radicalism, because it is impelled thereto by its love of destruction. A tabula rasa is what both want." (§ 85.)

—"Although far from cruel, the
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boy commits many cruel acts. His anger when irritated, his revengefulness when offended, his fury when controlled, are simply barbaric. But he nevertheless combines all this with a tenderness, or rather a weakness, of feeling, which easily passes into pusillanimity and exaggeration. The source of these opposite qualities is sentimentality, which is as cruel as it is easily aroused, as easily inclined to evil as it is capable of good. This sentimentality consists in an excessive degree of sensitiveness." (§ 87)

—"By nature the boy has only an abstract sensual conception of the world. He is able to conceive only unity or multiplicity; and these opposites coexist in him as unreconciled with one another as were Judaism and Greek polytheism in the ancient world." (§ 88.)

—"Abstraction makes things equal. Thus, the boy looks upon men as equal except in as far as they do not exist outside his own sphere. Boys among themselves are democrats. Their whole mind and heart demand equality. Take a school of thirty or forty boys the moment before the teacher enters. An absolute freedom and equality prevail among them. The instant the teacher appears, all are just as equal in obedience as they were before in anarchy. Boys are fit only for a democratic or a despotic government. To the boy freedom means only following his caprice, and doing what he pleases. His idea of equality is, that nobody should be allowed to enjoy higher privileges than himself. What has been said describes, as we believe, sufficiently the main traits of radicalism, considered as the submission of the organic life of man to the unlimited power of abstraction." (§ 92.)

—2. Liberalism. Liberalism is the representation of the young man. "The youth enters into the world free. He is no longer hampered by discipline; life and fate henceforth educate him. His first act is to examine the ground on which he stands, the inner and the outer world. His criticism spares nothing; he is bold enough to doubt everything; yet not merely for the sake of doubting. He doubts, in order by his own power to attain to truth. He seeks, in order to find. Intellectual and moral criticism is a main trait of all liberalism. But there is no trace in liberalism of the opposition which is made by the man who is not free. If I were to draw an historical picture of the character of liberalism, and point out wherein it differs from radicalism, I should recall the life of Luther in the religious sphere, and Lessing's labors in the scientific world." (§§ 93, 94.)

—"The young man is man in his highest bloom. Replete with life and movement, and at the same time full of sense and consciousness; his mind developed in every direction, at the height of creative power, high-minded and energetic, still undisturbed about fate; the entire man in the fullness of all his impulses, ardently desirous of the future, and yet even now master of the present, unhindered by obstacles, inventive of plans, full of sense in the choice of means, and of genius in execution; a constitution of this kind, or none, is adapted to reform, or rather, born to create and organize, just as the boy is fitted for revolution." (§ 95.)

—"Because it alone unites activity with genuine strength, liberalism is the formative principle of all existence, in science and in faith, in the church and in the state; and only that which contains within itself creative germs with a positive core, deserves the name of liberal. Everywhere, under all conditions, and even where it carries destruction before it, liberalism acts as an organizing power, and where it does not directly distribute blessing it is infusive of new life. In German history we have a refreshing picture of an organizing liberal in King Henry I." (§ 96.)

—"The opinions of the young man are full of ardor, his assertions are full of acuteness, but he is naturally too modest and too humane not to honor all outside aspirations if nobly harbored. Where the boy is exclusive in his opinions the young man investigates, and where the former is narrow-minded the latter preserves his intellectual sight free and undimmed. He is free from prejudice, and takes things as they are; and this freedom is the mother of the highest kind of toleration, a toleration, however, which never ignobly vacillates between what is good and what is evil, or which meanly wavers between opposite tendencies, but honors what is worthy of honor, even in its bitterest enemy, and from its own steady point of view judges, with impartiality, the points of view of others." (§ 97.)

—"As independence is the nerve of manhood, it follows that the man can never find the reasons of his actions in authority; he can find them only in the truth which authority can lay before him. A liberal government will never pay homage to public opinion as such, nor to the spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist as such; yet it will always respect the spirit of the age, combat its falsities, and take its truths to heart. A liberal opposition will never despise the authority of the throne, nor accept any proposal merely because it comes from the throne, nor, like the radicals, reject it only because it emanates from the throne." (§ 109.)

—"The age period of the young man is the highest expression of man. The mightiest ideas and passions, the highest power of his intellect, the richest fullness of his sensitive faculties, and his most perfect bodily development, belong to this age. In this age stage man becomes man complete. In this sense liberalism is humane, it and humanity become one. The greatest and only perfect liberal known to history is Christ. And through what did Christ exert his most powerful influence, and so powerfully that no one among us who knows anything of his individuality can well help loving and revering him? Why has his image been stamped so deeply on the heart of humanity? Not because of the sublimity of his mind, or simply because of the miracles of his life alone; not because of the supernatural in his nature, but because of his humanity." (§ 100)

—"If it be true that liberalism expresses human nature in that which is most peculiar to it, then of the four parties referred to above, supremacy belongs to it; for only man should rule over men. But as
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nature tarries long and in a thousand ways in its lower phases; and as it only seldom, and but for a short time, gives us glimpses of its summits; thus also liberalism, in all nations, has ruled only during their most flourishing epochs, and only for a short period." (§ 102.)

—"The education of the young man is the school of life. His teaching goes to the root of things. His culture is the development of pure humanity in its widest sense. Where radicalism only looks at schooling, liberalism looks at the nature of man; the one has an eye only to what has been learned, the other to what is inborn; the former gives us only state-servants, the latter statesmen. To liberalism also the teaching of the people is sacred. It desires that every one should be brought up a man. But, instead of applying the standard of the highest stages to the lower ones, it aims at an organization of public instruction that may afford the possibility of the highest culture to any one capable of receiving it, even those of the lowest classes, yet without over-educating them." (§§ 102, 103.)

—"The direct, fresh-springing creative power that distinguishes the young man, as compared with the talent of the boy, and the calculating wisdom of advanced age, is called genius. Genius knows, where talent only learns; it creates, where talent plays; and thinks where the latter dreams. The true man knows himself, and carries his measure within him. To know himself is the fundamental condition, and to measure accurately the highest quality of genius. The boy overrates his own powers, and allows them to disport themselves without control; the man knows them, and uses them with circumspection. Radicalism, in its policy and in the administration of the state, herein acts like the boy, liberalism, like the man. When liberalism is at the helm, all the parts of the state are called into activity proportionately to their importance, but none are overrated, none overstrained. Ancient Rome and England are still patterns in regard to the knowledge of state measures, and in the observation of the proper measure. Liberalism does not perfect anything before maturity, or before the times command it. But then it acts quickly, thoroughly and with energy. Of this nature was the regeneration of Prussia at the time of French supremacy. Even under the administration of Stein decree followed decree; but the national spirit advanced step by step with these decrees. While Stein was laying the foundations of civil freedom, and Scharnhorst those of public defense, the intelligence and heart of the German people had been raised to the level of this freedom, and its active energy had begun to long for the armament of the nation." (§§ 104-110.)

—"Clearness of understanding, grandeur and abundance of ideas, logical penetration, perfection of language and power of speech, characterize the period of bloom of the human mind. His entire organization impels the young man into the fields of intellect, in search of organic knowledge, to the study of philosophy and psychology, of the sciences of the state, and of politics. The philosophy of the schools, or mere scholasticism, call it as we may, formulas and technical terms, may suit the boy, but the philosophy of truth and of life belong to the man. Liberalism, above all, thinks with the natural understanding. Its human character tells it that true philosophy, like true religion, must be universally human, and therefore intelligible. Greek philosophy was liberal, so far as its results affected the education, the constitution and the politics of the Greeks; the practical philosophy of the English was also liberal, although only to a limited extent, and the philosophy of the great German thinkers, of Leibnitz, Lessing, Herder, Muller and Frederick the Great, was liberal in a still higher degree. But the German systematic philosophy as such, is not liberal, because the manner and method according to which it seeks truth are formal, and the tendency which it keeps in view is not that of life, but of thought as a business. But, to liberalism, thought and action, theory and practice, are one and the same thing." (§§ 112, 113.)

—"The boy applies to the world an abstract, speculative or mathematical, and the young man a psychological, measure. The one seeks and acts according to formulas, the other according to organic laws; the one sets up categories, the other principles. The young man is full of ideals, but his ideals are rooted in ideas. A policy, if it be grand and human, must pursue an ideal; and it only ceases to be a manly policy, when, instead of pursuing this end with a cool, considerate sense of the practical, it pursues it in an idealistic manner. In the highest stage of liberalism the ideal and real become one. Every liberal ideal, even when a failure in the present, leaves seeds behind it in history, from which subsequently either its corporeal form springs, or some other blessing is harvested." (§§ 115-117.)

—"The eye of the young man is turned mainly forward into the present and the future. His relation to history is not an immediate one, and yet it is none the less a deep and sacred one. Life leads him into history. Every institution which history has sanctified, is sacred to him, not because that which was or that which is of long duration compels his respect, but because he understands its foundation in human nature, its effects on the head and heart, in a word, its psychological character. The liberal knows that no power in history can be destroyed unless the psychical roots which it has shot out are destroyed, or unless a greater power can be put in motion against it. In other words, no historical institution should be tampered with unless there be substituted for its hitherto psychical efficacy a psychical efficacy equally great." (§ 118.)

—"There is a distinctive trait which infallibly distinguishes the character of the young man from that of the boy. The boy is vain, the man has only a quiet pride. Let us compare Lafayette with Washington. Although the two were near enough to each other in views and circumstances, the simple and quiet demeanor of Washington contrasts widely enough with Lafayette's vanity,
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to warrant us in characterizing the latter as a radical, and Washington as a liberal." (§§ 121, 122.)

—"The young man as quickly subordinates himself to another whom he recognizes as his superior, as he classes himself above those whom he feels to be his inferiors. While the boy says: There is no higher right than mine,' all the man wishes is that 'every one should have what belongs to him.' The main trait of the young man's character is hatred of all oppression and want of equity and uprightness of mind. When this side of his character is touched, he forthwith reveals all the full life of his soul, and the indomitable energy of his mind. But, as he constantly keeps in view the moral natural law, and sees the contradiction of positive material law with the essential order of things to be more frequent as he grows older, he is liable to abandon or neglect, in disgust, traditional forms, and thus to afford his adversary a weapon, by the skillful handling of which, many a liberal has succumbed in the fight against hypocritical legality the legality of the scribes and pharisees. In his Götz von Berlichingen. Goethe has described a character of this kind." (§ 124.)

—"The position of liberalism toward religion may be described by recalling Bacon's well-known principle, that true philosophy should doubt everything; but that through doubt it should return to God. Liberalism, at the start, is always criticism; its end is the taking of a position. The religion of liberalism is free and cheerful, and even its doubts are calm and respectful." (§§ 129-131.)

—"The young man sees everywhere the law of superordination and subordination, an immense gradation of forces succeeding one another, not side by side with one another; a gradation of forces different in kind and essence; and he soon perceives that the machinery of creation rests on this diversity. Liberalism knows no measure of primordial rights except that which nature has implanted in each individual; that is, the gradation of freedom or independence is to him the same as the gradation of God-given power. By divine decree all have equal rights, but not the sum of rights. Humanity is, he says, by virtue of its organization, that is, by virtue of divine right, a great aggregate individual, endowed with supremacy over the earth. Every member of this aggregate has a share in its rights. This share is greater the more it gives expression to the character of the whole, and smaller the further it is removed from it. Not an equal share for all, but to each one his own, is here also the great principle of liberalism. To liberalism it seems to be the highest problem of science, the foremost task of statesmanship, the fundamental condition of all human well-being, to assign to every capacity its proper sphere, to every virtue its corresponding field of activity, to every individuality its right place." (§§ 132-136.)

—"But when, from these principles, that seem so simple, and as it were deduced from nature itself, the young man turns his glance toward the positive condition of things, he beholds another world. He finds that the external hierarchy of the classes of society is not true to its origin, and only too often the reverse of the inward dignity which those classes should express. He finds the crowd in the higher, and nobility in the lower, orders; he discovers stupidity ruling, wealth governing, the weak influential, the bad honored, mind the prey of misery and neglect, force sacrificed to inaction, highmindedness to hatred and intrigue. In nature itself he sees causes provocative of contradiction and difficulty. Not only can he find no way by which to determine dignity of character and the value of men's deserts; he finds an organic confusion in the dualism of the measure itself. The worth of the individual is not determined exclusively by his individual organization, but by another standard, by race. Race is not limited to nationality, but extends its spirit to the province, to the tribe and to the family. It is inseparable from the person; it is a matter preliminary to passing judgment on men; it is the cover in which his real nature is enwrapped, it is the canvas from which the characteristic peculiarity of the individual stands out in relief. As it affords the liberal a second measure of human valuation, his task is to place both measures in their right relation to each other, to consider the race as the substratum, and the individual as the quality, so that the latter may prevail, but with due consideration for the former." (§ 139.)

—"From the view of the world above described, it follows that the man considers the state as a direct necessary product of human nature, as the crown of human organization. The man recognizes no public or constitutional law with its origin in contract. Neither does he admit a state of which God, in a mechanical sense, is the originator and governor, except in so far as God has endowed human nature with the instinct to form states, and as he forever remains in close union with man, his creature. The man knows only an organically operating God, a God acting through human freedom. In himself, in his body and in his soul, the man finds the fundamental principles of the organism of the state. Liberalism conceives the state as a body, of which no member is without a connection with the whole, and of which no member is without a share in the whole. But in this organism it conceives each state power in its place freely acting within its sphere, no power so separated from another as to disturb the living connection between them, no one opposed to another, but one all-embracing power at the head of all. The law he considers as the aggregate product of the national will. Hence it wishes that not the head exclusively, but the members also, should share, in due proportion, in the legislative power. It considers every state as the embodiment of a nation, and every nation as a particular individual with indestructible features. The state of the party of liberalism is a state which respects the rights of the mind, as the highest criterion of class, so that the poorest peasant may rise to the highest order of nobility, and the scion of nobility sink to the lowest condition, as complete worth or worthlessness
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characterizes them: a constitution which in everything prefers man to external circumstances, nature to culture, insight to acquired learning, and which affords to mind and virtue the best opportunity to assert their power." (§§ 141-147.)

—If, accordingly, we are asked to define the fundamental character of liberalism, as contrasted with radicalism, we must say that the real distinction between them consists in the supremacy of abstraction in the latter, and the supremacy of the individual in the former.

—3. Conservatism. Conservatism is explained by the nature of the "older man." The term "older man" is evidently inappropriately applied to the age of man from thirty-two to forty-eight, as Rohmer applied it, because it suggests a still more advanced age. Even the term "tried man" is generally applied to men in the forties, not to those in the thirties. In the absence of an expression corresponding to the Latin juvenis, we prefer to use the term "complete," "mature," or simply "the man," because he has reached life's zenith, toward which the young man, striving upward, is still pressing.

—"The perfect man has already reached the vantage ground which the young man is still struggling to attain. His affairs are regulated, his home is established, and he has found a field for action. His concern is not coveting anything new, but holding fast to what he has; not acquisition, but increase; not the conquering of an unknown world, but the regulation of the world he knows. He is self-reliant and free, like the young man; to a much higher degree, in so far as the ripeness of age lifts him above the necessity of assistance, but to a lesser degree, in so far as the circumstances of life fetter him. He is fettered by circumstances, surroundings, duties, and a number of considerations of which the young man, generally single, has no idea. His wife and children, his position and property, equally impose on him the duty of preservation; instinct and consciousness impel him to it. Nature has summed up the conditions of all life in two fundamental laws, the law of generation and the law of preservation. Thus, also, the two fundamental tendencies of humanity are characterized by these laws, liberalism by the former, and conservatism by the latter, law." (§ 153.)

—"The mature man, of all men, has alone an 'unconditional' claim to govern. The young man, through the earlier half of his career, combines skill and force, but he lacks experience. When we say that liberalism usually guides the world, that conservatism rules it, while radicalism opposes and absolutism intrigues, we briefly characterize the relations of parties to one another as the condition of mankind generally creates them." (§ 154.)

—"The man has formed his opinions. His views are fixed, his faith is a definite one. The young man had to acquire truth through doubt; he must through investigation preserve and elevate the truth. The young man criticises in order to acquire; the man, to increase what has been acquired. An inclination to preserve, and skill in improving: such are the man's preponderating traits. Being the master of a household, and settled in all his relations, he avoids all disturbance, and changes nothing, when a pressing need does not render the change necessary. But it is equally natural to him to give an ever firmer foundation to his home and family, and to perfect his condition more and more. His position not only does not prevent him from making, but it impels him to make, all such improvements in his situation on the largest possible scale, and by all means in his power.

—In this he is just as indefatigable and active as the young man in his endeavor to acquire a fortune. Without being indifferent or narrow minded, he takes the world as it is, with its perfections and defects; and his way of making it more endurable consists rather in developing the good elements that are in it, and in preserving them, than in building new creations from them, creations the success of which he does not feel certain of. As the young man not only feels himself impelled to positive, new creations, but at the same time to the removal of abuses, and of that which has been outlived, so also the conservative man, besides increasing present stores, feels always inclined to the restoration of those institutions which a thankless or a narrow-minded age had unjustly allowed to decay. From the first of these dispositions reform proceeds; from the latter, restoration." (§ 158.)

—"The supremacy of the mature man depends on the esteem which he commands, on the confidence which he inspires, and on the firmness of his whole nature. His education, in point of genuine solidity, comprehensiveness of knowledge and command of details, is as superior to the education of the young man as it is inferior to it in ideal human nature. The ideal force of liberalism may prove wholesome in opposition to the state: the life experience of conservatism belongs directly to affairs" (§ 161.)

—"We have summed up the intellectual constitution of the perfect man in the term wisdom. Wisdom can not vie with genius in productiveness, but it is equal to the latter in wealth of conception, and superior to it in elaboration. Wisdom is inferior to genius in penetration, but surpasses it in circumspection; wisdom, by its fullness of knowledge, makes up for the advantage genius has over it in keenness of perception, and it supplies, by its comprehension of details, the ease with which genius grasps the whole; experience imparts to wisdom a solidity and knowledge of men which for substance may well compete with splendor of ideas. If genius carries measure within it because it watches over itself, the having such measure within one's self is to wisdom a second nature: to keep within measure and to be wise are one. The young man is genius in motion, the mature man is genius at rest. The former may be called active, the latter passive, genius. If, in poetry, we compare Shakespeare and Goethe, we have an approximate picture of this latter difference." (§ 162.)

—"Wisdom investigates and forecasts: it tracks out what
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is hidden, it understands the past, and preserves the germs of the future; sagacity and power of memory are inborn in the perfect man. As we regard language as the highest power of the young man, so we may consider intellectual discernment as the faculty most peculiar to the mature man. In these, language and intellectual discernment the highest faculties of man, lies the difference between liberal and conservative politics, when once intelligence rules. The science of mind here becomes the science of the conditions into which the mind has settled, the law of nature becomes historic right, and psychology becomes history. Hence, what conservatism produces is not essentially new; it is only the same truth, the same creation that liberalism already had created, only in another light." (§ 163.)

—"Liberalism struggles for principles, and it only is able to give birth to the highest principle. Yet if it lights on a false principle, it falls into errors, which the mature man can never share, because he never opposes principles to positive life, but always moderates them through law and history. He also desires that external law should be a mirror of the inner law, but he never sacrifices it for the sake of the latter, because experience makes him recoil from the danger of such attempts. The inviolability of property, and of private rights in general, is hence one of the principal features of conservatism." (§ 165.)

—"The power of resistance preserves man externally, and inwardly he is guided by the principle of fidelity. This fidelity has given rise to the German proverb: Ein wort, ein mann; the keeping of one's word is so peculiarly the mark of conservative minds." (§ 167.)

—"Practical life is the natural field of the mature man. The government of the family, marriage, the relation of master and servant, are best understood and managed by the mature man. The young, as well as the mature, man, founds marriage on the divine sanction, that is, on the divine natural law, which has willed the duality of the sexes, and therewith the organic union of two individuals fitted for each other; but while the young man founds the mutual supplementing of the two sexes on the psychical similarity of their natures, the latter measures it by similarity of their situation in actual life, and of the conditions necessary to the secure existence of a family. Both views, however, are misused, the former by radicalism, the latter by absolutism. In the former, the inner inclination degenerates into a weakly, fickle feeling, and we have modern marriage, which has rightly been called sentimental marriage. Absolutism, on the other hand, makes marriage merely a matter of convenience, inasmuch as, without any regard to nature, it pays attention only to the external circumstances, such as birth, money, etc." (§ 168.)

—"In the case of the mature man the government of a family is closely connected with the direction of his household and the management of his property. To possess is a craving of his nature. From being thus bound to property and family, it follows that conservatism, as a party, is more difficult to organize and direct than other parties. The conservative party is usually inactive and phlegmatic; everybody attends to his own business; matters are allowed to go, and men are aroused only when there is actual danger; in England, for instance, it is not the party of moderation, but the high tories, who keep alive the violent agitation of parties." (§ 169.)

—"Experience, and the wants that necessarily accompany it, lead the mature man more directly to religion than does criticism the young man. If the mature man is preponderantly religious, he may be severe, and to a certain degree anxious; but never unfree or unfriendly disposed toward manly criticism. He will accordingly treat the church with sincere regard and love. But he is the most pronounced enemy of any falling off in the discipline of the church, of worldliness in the members of the church, of abuse of its sacred character." (§§ 171-173.)

—"As in mature age, there is substituted a sense of obligation for the extreme freedom in which youth delighted, so the sense of order is found in the man, side by side with the notion of liberty; and it governs. Freedom desires that every one should attain the highest of which he is capable; order, that no one should aspire higher than becomes him.

—Race, to which youth only pays secondary consideration, has for the father of a family an entirely new importance. An unintentional, irrepressible instinct impels the mature man to attribute to it a higher importance, and only to give it up when the individual is completely useless. Liberalism and conservatism value the organic powers of man; liberalism with a preponderating appreciation of the organically peculiar, and conservatism of the organically inherited. The "peculiar" powers build up society; the "hereditary" preserve it. In the former lies the prototype, without which nothing can come into existence; in the latter, tradition, without which nothing can endure. As greatness of individuality, combined with a corresponding exterior, confers precedence on the person who is possessed of both, a precedence which men are wont unconsciously, and by virtue of an original instinct, to acknowledge, so also a superior race, in combination with wealth of material and intellectual possessions, commands a consideration which nobody thinks of withholding from it. Heredity is accordingly immediately founded in conservatism, while liberalism knows it only in as far as it respects race as the foil, so to speak. But there is not only a congenital transmission, in which race consists, there is also an acquired one, a second, more spiritual transmission, which has the former for a foundation. The first is the inheritance of blood, which man receives at his entrance into the world; the second, the inheritance of all that which in the course of his life has to such a degree become naturally assimilated with his character that it becomes his second nature, the sum total of all the impressions which circumstances and intercourse with men and fortune have left
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upon him, permanently and with determining power." (§§ 174-177.)

—"In the liberal state, persons with their substratum of lineage, rule; in the conservative state, lineage, brought out into relief by persons, rules. In the former, ideas prevail, in connection with the existing state of things; in the latter, tradition, with the continuing influence of ideas. 'In the liberal state,' as Montesquieu expresses it, 'virtue' rules, and 'moderation' in the conservative state. In the former, public law is more developed; in the latter, private. In the former, political freedom prevails, on the basis of personal freedom; in the latter, personal freedom, with the corresponding addition of political freedom. Liberalism considers the object of the state to be preponderantly active, and that it consists in the highest development of man as man; conservatism looks upon it as preponderantly passive, and that it consists in securing to the furthest extent the existing legal order of things." (§ 180.)

—4. Absolutism. In order correctly to understand the comparison of absolutism with the "old man," we must again call to mind that the age stages of human life seem fixed in parties, that is, that the different energies of the soul, which alternately appear and disappear in the life of the individual man, determine in a permanent manner the nature of parties. The individual who is by nature liberal or conservative, will continue liberal or conservative in his advanced years; the individual who is by nature old inclines even in boyhood toward absolutism. Not the qualities that have been developed at an early age, and which have attained to complete maturity, but only the qualities which appear for the first time in later years, and which nobody, not even the old man himself, considers better than the instincts and powers of youth and ripe manhood, determine the spirit of absolutism. The absolutist party, therefore, is compared to a man who is only old, and who is not, at the same time, a man in the sense of liberalism or conservatism.

—"The old man has left the greater part of his years behind him. He enjoys the past in reminiscences; the future, in his children; the present no longer belongs to him. The sum of his experiences is fixed. The convictions which he has derived from them are unchangeable. This result, bought with the toil and labor of a life, with its roots in his head and heart, a result to which the sweat of his brow and the blood of his hand still cling—this result, and this only, must be the true one. In old age we have no conditional, no relative views (?); near to the end we crave the absolute. The age stage, which has had more experience than the others, has no peer among the other stages. It withdraws into itself, and the world goes on, while old age believes it is overlooking it. This isolation, this inclination toward the absolute, combined with the weakness of nature, deprives old age of the ruling position to which by its very nature it seemed to be called preferably to all others. Age possesses a great fund of experience, but its experience is at an end. For only the man who without prejudice comes in contact with the world learns anything from the world. The organic position of absolutism, that in which the state (as nature requires) makes use of the experience of age, without sacrificing itself to its exclusiveness, is the consultative one." (§ 182.)

—"The old man hates novelty in the same degree as the boy loves it. Old age fetters his elasticity; his whole being revolts against it; for with every innovation a new portion of the edifice that it had reared with such immense toil is shattered. The world is changing about him; other opinions, other institutions, other customs, arise. Every day, so to speak, declares war against him. He is overcome with grief and disgust. Self-love, man's foremost quality, manifests reaction. The old man has passed through all the stages of life; he can understand them all, he exacts obedience from all. But while he lifts himself above them, while he makes his own phase of life the last product of all the others, and considers it the only true one, without, however, taking any part in the process of life either in the way of production or transformation, life slips from his grasp at the moment he believes he has finally grasped it. He is beset, on the one hand, by the indestructible instinct of old age to assert its importance, and on the other, by the impossibility of harmonizing with other men. Reaction is unavoidable. It lies in the innermost nature of absolutism." (§ 183.)

—"Intolerance and despotism are the natural consequences of this position. The principle of absolutism is the principle outside the adhesion to which there is no salvation. With it doubt is a sin, and resistance a crime. The narrowness of absolutism is less a lack of understanding than an instinctive unwillingness to understand anything in nature. It is this which imparts to the despotism of absolutism a much harsher, more injurious, character than to radical despotism. Absolutism frequently understands the demands of the peoples whom it maltreats; but it will not yield to these demands. When want comes, it knows how to appeal to higher ideas; it then accommodates itself to the times, it yields, capitulates—a clear proof that it can understand—yet only to go back to its old ways as soon as possible." (§ 184.)

—"As the boy plays the young man, so does the old man assume the demeanor of the mature man: in other words, as the radical takes upon himself the ways of the liberal, so does the absolutist desire to pass for a conservative. Radicalism rides heedlessly over old established rights, when they are an obstruction to innovation; reaction, regardless of consequences, destroys all the hardearned results of a grand present, that it may rule again. Both are equally ignorant of the laws of intellectual, and of the limits of historical, rights; both equally trample history and private rights under foot; both believe themselves able, by their 'fiat' of omnipotence, and by decrees on paper, to establish institutions in conflict with the spirit of the times, of nations and of the soil; both
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are equally destructive. 'The world is growing worse, the world was better in the past,' has, since Nestor's time, been the motto of the old man; as radicalism by its optimistic dreams, and the old man by his passiveness, undermine the quietude of nations." (§ 185.)

—"Reaction is naturally fixed in its retrogression, just as naturally as revolution raises its progress into law, and repels all contradiction. Reaction goes back only to a certain stage of the past but not as the restoration goes back to the past, as an intellectual development. This constitutes the essential difference between reaction and restoration. * *"—"The boy approaches the world with intuition and imagination, but the old man with reflection and combination. * * The one abounds in whims and ideals, the other with aperçus and rules; and at last the old man reaches the point the child had reached—at abstraction on the one hand, and at sensuous perception on the other. The deductive rules on which the old man relies without intellectually mastering them, inspire him with that infallible confidence, that strange self-deception, by which absolutism runs toward ruin, without perceiving the abyss, until the ground begins to quake under its feet. In this manner age collapses into a spiritless empiricism, which ignores all higher points of view, and at last degenerates into a materialism, which drags what is highest and holiest down into the dust." (§ 192.)

—"Where combination is so preponderantly developed as in the old man, the principle of numbers very naturally asserts itself. Mathematics and the entire series of the exact sciences are the field on which the mind of the old man finds its highest satisfaction. The boy applies himself to mathematics because its abstract generality satisfies his mind and sharpens his faculties, and the old man seeks refuge in it because it alone affords him that absolute yet sensibly real certainty in which his mind finds rest. But it seems rather strange that this empirical certainty should tempt him into shallows, from which even ideal contemplation remains exempt. In its train follow cabala, alchemy, magic and necromancy. The sober clearness of mathematical laws seems irreconcilable with the enigmatical plays of the cabala; and so does it seem incredible to reflecting reason, that dry rationalism, for which everything is too high which can not be made as plainly evident as that twice two makes four, should still pair itself with the nebulous mysticism of the theurgic and magic arts; and yet both are to be found united in absolutism." (§ 193.)

—"Old age is thus formal in history. If the boy is formal because he is unable to see through form, the old man resolves essence into form to shape it as he wants. Right sinks into a treaty. Loyalty becomes a narrow legalism, and the more the idea of right contracts, the more obstinately does the old man cling to separate provisions. The most sacred interests are sacrificed to the letter of an agreement, and the application of the law, under the veil of the summum jus, becomes a permanent exercise of the summa injuria. From the point of view of such legalism the condemnation of Christ was not judicial murder, but an act of justice. In legislation, also, absolutism applies this mechanical, arithmetical measure. History, with free-thinking absolutists, becomes a collection of maxims, aperçus, remarks and analogies, as it was with the men of the world trained in the French school of the last century; to the absolutists of a positive opinion, history is but the treasure house of his own opinions. The 'historical basis,' the 'deep ideas of the past,' the 'organic articulation of the state,' the 'good old law': absolutism frequently employs all these conservative phrases, just as its counterpart (radicalism) uses the words freedom and equality, and ignores them with the same ease." (§ 194.)

—"The heart of man feels the effect of years as heavily as his mind. Old age is as far removed from the equanimity of mature age. Its rest is but the quietism of exhaustion. The great passions have subsided; only the little ones remain. The old man is irritable in the highest degree, his moods are whimsical and changeable. His passive sensibility sometimes causes his mind to accept indiscriminately all impressions, and sometimes to display that dull indifference (laisser aller) which characterizes the staid man (philister), that inferior embodiment of absolutism." (§ 195.)

—"The boy, to become powerful, must remain under training; old age, on the contrary, must have pupils, and wishes to be surrounded by persons who obey. The old man may be mild, gentle, and careful of his pupils; but he wants no free man around him. An absolute government may be well meaning and paternal, but the air of freedom, the highest good of life, is never breathed under it." (§ 197.)

—"The weakness of old age reveals itself in a remarkable manner in this, that its virtue, like that of the boy, needs support from without. In the case of the boy this support is the law; in the case of the old man it is tradition, convention, maxims, reflective virtue, the morals of principles. If we wish to get a notion of the conventional morality of absolutism, we should read Kotzebue's plays. It was this morality that prevailed in the upper classes in the past century. Here there are no maxims of law and custom, but social considerations." (§ 198.)

—"If we reflect on the above it is obvious that there must enter into the efforts of old age, to attain moral perfection, an artificial element. As what is noble does not spring spontaneously from nature, incapacity calls forth a violent effort, and this again betrays 'the power of weakness.' Hence comes the demand for 'unconditional obedience' in absolute states. When the weakness of nature breaks through the bounds of principle, the vices of old age develop into unnatural tyranny, of which history affords so many instances. Philip II. is the most striking instance of wicked old age: another illustration is the hideous Tiberius, who, more than any other ruler, combined in his nature womanly weakness and diabolical strength, weakness of character
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and baseness. It is the custom to consider all the Roman emperors as absolutists; but Caligula, Nero and Commodus were only depraved boys; genuine tyrants are found only in old age.

—Modern Machiavelism walks about in a stately garb, gentle, pleasant and winning. It understands the art of appearance, and under paternal mildness conceals machination. It shakes hands with the proletarian, and surrounds itself with the severity of majesty, according to the times. Cruel when cruelty, kind when kindness, leads to its end, it ignores everything but its own aims, and the arithmetical weighing of the means. Such a man was Augustus, a man endowed with the greatest intellectual gifts, and who might well say of himself, that he had cleverly played his part." (§ 200.)

—"Old age is also characterized by weakness in private life, chiefly in the management of its household. As woman, both in childhood and old age, is superior to man, the interference of women in radical and absolute homes or states is almost unavoidable. If the times are favorable, woman becomes permanently preponderant. The government of mistresses in the eighteenth century is well known." (§ 201.)

—"Old age in matters of faith knows either only mechanical obedience or complete dissolution of beliefs, literal orthodoxy or atheism. Voltaire, La Mettrie and Shaftesbury were far from radical; they were profound, logical absolutists." (§ 201.)

—"When a reasoning absolutist wishes to understand the origin of the state, he is, by his very nature, forced to seek refuge in the idea of formal covenant, of an artificial contract. This famous theory, which is nothing but a distortion peculiar to old age, of natural right into arbitrary convention, owes its origin to the absolutist period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The radicals have adopted it because it is in keeping with their intellectual constitution; but to the provisions of the social contract, following their bent, they have added the doctrine of equality. According to virile notions, public authority has the right in itself, and subjects their rights in themselves. But only the free man can understand this, the man who is not free is compelled to seek the source of his condition, the title to his rights, outside himself. The man who is not free subjects himself to another, because, as the theory itself puts it, he alienates his rights to another, and the latter commands because the former has alienated his rights to him; or, according to orthodox ideas, because God has given the latter command over him." (§ 204.)

—"There is no right in absolute monarchy except that which emanates from the ruler; he alone is what he is by the grace of God; all the others are what they are only through the grace of the absolute monarch. The most perfect embodiment of this system is the constitution of the order of Jesuits, and the Roman caria, according to the Jesuitic conception of it. The company of Jesus subjects body, soul, actions and thoughts to the omnipotence of the general of the society, in whose hands the members are but unconscious tools. According to the curia, the whole church rests in the papal chair." (§ 205.)

—"Old age, however, besides despotism, has also its democratic features. Absolute power may be attributed to the people as well as to the ruler. Europe has witnessed not only a great radical, but also an absolutist, revolution, the English. That revolution was the embodiment of fanatical belief, as the French revolution was of fanatical abstraction. When the radical proletarian rises, he wishes to be put on an equal footing with others; when the lazzarone is aroused, he remains what he is, in order, as a lazzarone, to avenge himself on others." (§ 206.)

—"Because age carries the germ of dissolution in itself, it can only be kept together through the most rigid observance of forms. This is the essence of legitimist monarchy. Its characteristic trait is, that instead of striving to do the state service, it makes such service itself its purpose. In other words, it does not administer except for the sake of administering. Birth, not merit; money, not mind; routine and mannerism, are the conditions of appointment to place. Form becomes essence; essence, form. The external policy of absolutism knows only combinations, not ideas. Without any regard for the inborn tendencies of peoples, but simply to round out the national boundaries, it huddles provinces together at hap-hazard, as they have been acquired through conquest or marriage. Instead of natural equilibrium, it seeks an artificial balance, which may be disturbed by the merest breath; instead of treaties, it is satisfied with agreements for the moment; instead of a proper diplomacy, it pursues a diplomacy of intrigue, with a gorgeous representation, but without statesmanlike substance. Its foreign policy is either strictly orthodox (legitimist), or materialistic. Form everywhere rules.

—5. Mutual Relations of Parties. Liberalism and conservatism, the two virile parties, may combat each other, for although one in aim, their methods are different, but in spite of their differences they should never forget their close relationship. They are indeed nearer to each other than either of them is to any other party, and than the other parties are to each other. They may be opponents, but only opponents who respect each other." (§ 209.)

—"Between liberalism and absolutism, as also between conservatism and radicalism, there is no point of contact. They are even as different in what they do as in how they do it. On the other hand, liberalism and radicalism have a common line of action, while conservatism and absolutism have the feature of preservation in common; but in spirit and character, liberalism and conservatism are superior to the extreme parties. Radicalism and absolutism, finally, have many resemblances in their bearing. Sometimes they act together friendly; more frequently they combat each other, very much as boys refuse to longer submit to the rule of the older. The true relation of parties is found when the extreme parties share
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in the national struggles only mediately, and are led by their corresponding manly parties. Politics is ruined when the extreme parties obtain supremacy." (§§ 210-212.)

—6. Psychological Contrasts in Polities in General. Since Rohmer's doctrine of parties psychologically determines and describes the fundamental types of parties in accordance with the age stages of man, and thus discovers four types, peculiar both in spirit and character, it goes beyond the task of explaining political parties themselves, and thus, from being a theory of political character and mind in their natural chief kinds and forms, it becomes a new psychological science of politics in general. This theory throws new light on political facts and individual character. Even where there are no political parties, there are still to be found radical, liberal, conservative, absolutist, individuals whose way of thinking and acting finds its explanation in that theory, just as much as if such individuals had formed themselves into a party, and as such, tried to influence public life. Those fundamental types may also more clearly and easily be illustrated in individuals than in parties, for on the formation of parties many things exercise an influence besides the natural disposition of the individuals who unite to form a party. It not unfrequently happens that the leaders of the parties individually belong to another type than the party itself. The liberal Mirabeau was the head of a radical party; the liberal Pitt was the leader of the absolutist conservative tories; in the revolution of the Netherlands, the conservative William the Silent led the radical-liberal party. In Switzerland the absolutist parties, in Germany the ultramontane parties, are often led by radicals; and so, on the other hand, the radical-revolutionary parties confide their cause to the expert skill of absolutist generals.

—Above parties stand the people. But in nations also we often perceive the same chief tendencies that distinguish individuals and parties. In the French national character the absolutist character, and in the French spirit the radical trait, is very prominent; and this explains the violent changes in French political history. On the contrary, in the Russian nation the absolutist spirit seems to be combined with a radical disposition. The English are manifestly liberal in character and conservative in spirit; the ideal of the Germans is a liberal government, maintained and supported by the conservative people.

—From the four fundamental tendencies of humanity, Rohmer derives four general characters of political constitutions, as distinguished from forms of the state. "Radicalism, as the supremacy of abstraction, engenders the idol state; liberalism, as the supremacy of individual personality, the individual state; conservatism, which pays homage above all things to the power of history and the rights of races, the race state; and finally, absolutism, the form state." (§§ 220-226.)

—The history of nations, and, on the whole, in its grand outlines, the history of humanity, follows these changing impulses in their different periods. The period of childhood is devoted to the service of abstraction; in old age, traditional forms obtain a decisive authority. At the height of life the manly tendencies prevail. Humanity has not as yet reached its climax, but it is manifestly approaching it. Its development on the whole is, therefore, liberal; the modern era is intellectually freer and more self-conscious than any previous one. But, within modern times, history, in different ages and phases of development, has already repeatedly made the circuit of the age stages of man, and of their respective tendencies. On this necessary movement rests, in part, the divine education of nations; on this also rests their highest expression, the changing phases of the spirit of the times, the breath of which every one feels, but the correct understanding of which constitutes the art of the statesman.

J. C. BLUNTSCHLI.

PARTY GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.

PARTY GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. The first recorded party contest in New York state, in 1789, ended in a total poll of 12,453; the total vote in 1880 was 1,102,945, and the number of voters over 1,200,000. This advance in the voting and the possible votes of nearly one hundred fold, or six times larger than the growth of population, aptly measures at once the needs, the conditions and the development of party government in the United States. Meetings at "Martling's" in New York, and the "Long Room" in Boston, were sufficient for the conduct of party affairs, while the voters of one city numbered less than 3,000, and the poll list of the other fell short of this number by one-half; but the enormous increase of the voting voter, due, first, to the spread of political privileges by law, second, to the growth of political interests by party contests, and third, to the increase of population—has rendered the earlier methods obsolete, and developed an intricate system of party government, the product of the last sixty years, whose working is most vigorously attacked by those least aware of the tremendous difficulties presented by the quadrennial mobilization of 9,000,000 voters. The development of party government has, therefore, been along the inevitable lines of increasing organization and delegated powers, whose development in the state is the familiar story of representative government. Burke's definition, "Party is a body of men united in promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed," was accurately applicable to the small and coherent body of electors which be represented. While remaining true in spirit, it has ceased to apply in detail to the two great political camps into which the United States has been substantially divided for thirty years. In these two parties a bare fraction of voters, not a tenth at most, carrying on the active work of party government, constitute the standing army of political life, which in periodical struggles exhausts its efforts in the endeavor "to poll the last man";
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in a word, to mobilize the great mass of inert voters with constantly increasing success. Beginning in 1820 with a polled vote in New York state (where the records are most complete), with one voter in five (12,453 in 1789, out of 57,606 voters in 1790), the proportion steadily rose to 31.12 per cent. in 1826, increased rapidly during the next six years, in which the foundations of party government were laid, to an average of 60 per cent., or very nearly the average now obtaining in Great Britain, rising in the ten years ending in 1865 to 77, reaching in the presidential year 1876 to 88 per cent., and in 1880 to 90 per cent. How largely keen political interest and high intelligence are needed to increase this per cent. is made best apparent by the fact that the highest percentage of voting voters in those states has been for years in the counties whose percentage of American-born population is largest. This growth in the percentage of voters exercising the right of voters, no less than the widening of suffrage, has increased the complexity of party management during the last century upon a scale rather one of kind than of degree.

—At the organization of the federal government the number of voters in each political division was still small enough to permit the management of parties by the simple and rudimentary methods long in use among English-speaking peoples. These were, self-nomination for the candidate, the caucus or meeting to express the desire of the voter, and in addition, as a dormant political power in the state, there existed the convention, which the traditions rather than the usage of the English constitution made the form in which the general body politic took original and initiatory action. Except in the southern states, which retain many archaic forms in their political life, self-nomination has disappeared in this country, the public meeting has become the caucus or primary, and is treated elsewhere (see CAUCUS); while the convention, developing along two distinct and independent lines, has become in its constitutional form the body to which is committed the composition of organic law, while in its political form it has come to be the body which in county, district, state and national affairs acts under a loosely defined body of usage and party regulation for the party as an organic whole, in theory drawing its power from the primaries, in practice acting independently, regulating their action and determining their constitution.

—These two widely divergent forms of the convention originated in the same stem; but while one attained full development and power in the constitution-making period of the revolution, the other only reached its development in the party-making period, which began in 1820, and ended in 1840, with the party organization now (1883) in existence in full operation, although the development of its details is still in progress. The convention, as a primal political force in the body politic, appeared early in American history. "They had no doubt," says Hutchinson of the action of the Massachusetts colonists when the old council had taken possession of the government from which a mob had driven Gov. Andross, "received advice of the convention called by the prince of Orange, and, in imitation of it, they recommended (May 2, 1689) to the several towns of the colony to meet and depute persons," who assembled, and assumed the right to decide what constituted the government of the colony, as the convention parliament of 1688, assembled without a writ, had decided upon the constituent powers of the English government. The whig lawyers who managed the revolution in the thirteen colonies, itself essentially a political struggle, were mindful of the organic character which precedent attached to a convention, and termed the meeting of commissioners from the colonies a congress. Meanwhile, the radical changes in progress through the colonies were conducted by conventions, the work being at length completed by a federal constitutional convention, while the political government of the day was carried on by meetings in the large cities, supplemented by the collective action taken by the members of colonial assemblies. The latter, as well as the former, bridged over the period between their sessions and their assembly through the appointment of committees of correspondence, a body which is the lineal predecessor of the "state central committee" of the present day, and which remained for over fifty years after the revolution the stated political authority in deciding upon the executive conduct of campaigns. These public meetings and committees of correspondence, in the post-revolutionary period, conducted normal political action; the convention was employed when extraordinary steps were proposed. Shay's rebellion was preceded by one which met at Springfield, and embraced delegates from the counties about; the alarm created by the Hartford convention was in part due to the selection of this term in summoning it, and, without much regard to whether the body was made up of delegates, any mass meeting of more than usual importance was termed a convention; e.g., the New York meeting nominating George Clinton in 1811, the mass meeting led by Daniel Webster in New Hampshire in 1812, or even the early "conventions" in Maryland and Pennsylvania which nominated Jackson and Harrison.

—The initiative in local and state party government, which rested at the opening of the revolutionary war with city meetings, societies and their committees of correspondence, was transferred in the period succeeding this struggle to state and federal legislatures, by whom it continued to be exercised until 1830 in all parts of the country, and in some southern states until 1860. The change in New York state, a closely divided political body, whose politics early reached, and has since maintained, a high degree of organization, which makes its development typical, was distinct and definite in this direction. George Clinton had been the chief executive of the state through the war of independence, by
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unopposed election. The first serious step toward the organization of an opposition was by a meeting of Clinton's opponents Feb. 11, 1789, which nominated Robert Yates, and appointed a committee of correspondence to promote his election, while a letter soliciting his candidacy was addressed to him from Albany. Three years later the nomination of John Jay was made by a called meeting of his special supporters, and confirmed by a larger body held later; Clinton, representing the more popular organization, received his nomination from a general meeting "composed, as was alleged, of gentlemen from various parts of the state," followed by meetings in each county. Here was the early germ of the convention, as now known; but it withered from the practical difficulty and the vast expense of travel, which made it impossible to bring political delegates together, except as they were already assembled in state legislatures. It is highly significant that each step in the higher organization of our parties has been at a time when internal transportation was developed. The state convention reached its development in New York state in the decade which saw the Erie canal opened; the national convention first became complete in the period of railroad expansion from 1850 to 1860, and the management of a national campaign from a single party centre only became possible from 1870 to 1880, when the telegraph system of the United States was first extended over our territory. These are the real conditions which have made possible the development, and determined the character, of party government. Tocqueville early pointed out the extraordinary freedom of political association enjoyed in this country, but this would have continued dependent on cliques and caucuses at state capitals and at the seat of federal power, if it had not been supplemented by a freedom and facility in travel and communication inconceivable when he wrote. By 1795 an unprecedented advance in population had extended the base of political action in New York state beyond the scope of any meeting, large or select, on Manhattan island, and John Jay was nominated by a quasi legislative caucus held at Albany, which was, for a quarter of a century after, the centre of political action. To the close of the century, the action of the Albany caucus was still shared by citizens of the state capital; but the tendency was to recognize only legislators as its members, and in 1804 Aaron Burr and Morgan Lewis were nominated by fully organized legislative caucuses. Even then the Burrite ticket was completed by a public meeting at Albany, which nominated Oliver Phelps as lieutenant governor; but for Burrites and "Quids" the Albany caucus of legislators was the controlling body, its "address" the party platform, and its "committee of correspondence" the governing body of the campaign. A "regular" party organization now first appeared in New York politics, which has never since been without a political organization claiming "regularity" by virtue of its unbroken political succession from the body which in 1805 nominated D. D. Tompkins. For twenty years afterward the business of carrying on party government was conducted at Albany, and the struggle against the "Albany regency" was in fact the struggle of the counties and their political action against power which out of the necessity of the post road had gravitated to Albany. The same development of party government was in progress at all the state capitals, at least as far south as Virginia and as far north as Massachusetts. In New Hampshire the "Rockingham convention," Aug. 5, 1812, a mass meeting of 1,500 voters, adopted a platform, nominated a full ticket, state, electoral and congressional, and joined in a vigorous address to President Madison. In Vermont "conventions of free men" and the legislative caucus acted indiscriminately, sometimes reaching the same nominations. The public meeting preserved its place as the origin of political action much later at the south, and the extent of the states west and south of Virginia left a political initiative to the county, which has long survived, although the legislatures were in all these states centres of political action. Inevitably, however, the condition of society on the frontier rendered impossible methodical political action. Nominations in Kentucky, in 1799, for a constitutional convention and state legislature, were "agreed upon" in many counties by "committees of two from each religious society and from each militia company"; a combination of religious and secular affairs in political organization which had its analogue in Philadelphia at a recent period in the cant political question, "Are you a presbyterian or democrat?" whose answer opened more than one election fight.

—In Virginia a periodical Richmond caucus early in the century decided on state nominations, and appointed a committee of correspondence, which acted with like committees in the counties. The action of this legislative caucus was so strictly a matter of state party government that in a presidential year, as in 1812, it did not go beyond the nomination of electors, and passed no resolutions expressing a preference as to a candidate for president, or enunciating a national platform, the "only test laid down" in the selection of electors being "Will he vote for Mr. Madison?" In Pennsylvania nominations were made at this time in the same way, and party management vested in members of the legislature. In Massachusetts, even as late as 1826, the Jackson "corresponding committee," appointed by a meeting in Boston, deferred meeting "until the legislature met, and a state convention could be assembled," steps in this direction still hinging on the legislature. To party management the members of the legislature naturally added the declaration of party policy and party principles. The sphere which has been occupied during the half century closing in 1880-90 by the party platforms and the letters of candidates, was earlier filled by addresses from state legislatures on federal and state topics, taking a range and
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appearing with a frequency since unknown. For nearly fifty years after the revolutionary war these addresses summed up the opposing political doctrines of the day, and the members who signed them managed the party organizations. Nor, in comparisons between the personal character of state legislatures at an earlier and later date, is it fair to forget that membership in these bodies fifty years ago gave the political control of party nominations and party policy which has since become vested in the party convention and its "central committee." (Ability will always gravitate where real power is exerted) This is exercised to-day upon the floor of conventions, whose members are quite as often hindered in their influence as aided in their authority by a seat at Washington or in a state capital. The control exercised by the legislative caucus found its natural analogue in a like control over federal affairs in the congressional caucus at Washington, whose power was first challenged, not by the national convention which succeeded it, but by the state legislative caucus, which envied both the power of the body at Washington and the preponderating influence enjoyed in the councils of the meeting at Washington by the Richmond caucus. Aaron Burr's nomination as vice-president was the first formal action taken by a caucus at Washington—Jefferson's selection being a foregone conclusion—and Burr was nominated at the suggestion of an Albany conference. By 1808 seventeen members of the "republican" caucus at Washington bolted its action on another suggestion from Albany. State legislatures had begun, each on its own account, to make presidential nominations, but holding their action subordinate to final determination at Washington, precisely as in the convention period state conventions present their "favorite sons" to national conventions. The objection to the congressional caucus as the manager of national politics had become so serious in 1812 that the call that year laid stress upon the regular character of the assembly, while the resolutions passed disclaimed any power in its members to act except in a personal capacity. Albany was, as usual, the first to break ground in a new direction, and the republican legislative caucus at Albany nominated De Witt Clinton ten days (May 29, 1812) after Madison's nomination at Washington. "One nomination," said "Niles' Register," in commenting upon their action, "is just as legitimate as the other." The convention which met at New York in September of the same year, with a representation from eleven states included in its membership, and which is sometimes cited as the first nominating convention, was in fact a mass meeting held to approve, or, in modern phrase, "indorse," the nomination made at Albany. Four years earlier a like assemblage held at "Martling's" styled itself a "general meeting," and, while approving by name state nominations, in the address which it instructed its committee of correspondence to "forward to republicans of the United States," exhorted them to "support such candidates for offices in the general government as are regularly selected and recommended by a republican majority of the Union"; meaning, of course, the congressional caucus.

—Party government had now reached a stage in which the congressional caucus, whose power, though questioned, was supreme, carried on the loose national organization of the day through its standing committee of correspondence; state legislatures did the same for state contests; while an inchoate representative political body did the like in the cities. The "general meeting" had already become too cumbrous to carry on party affairs in cities like New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore; Boston was still a town whose inhabitants enjoyed right of pasturage on the common for thirty years later. Secret societies had been an earlier substitute for the mass meeting, of which "Tammany, a society of the Columbian order," is the last lingering representative. The "democratic society," organized in Philadelphia during Washington's second term, had its affiliated branches over Pennsylvania and the neighboring states, extending to the outer bounds of the Kentucky wilderness. Federal politics in western Massachusetts and the region about were for nearly a generation at this period powerfully influenced, if not controlled, by a secret society which had affiliated branches in New England and the middle states, and more transient organizations existed elsewhere; all circumstances which played an important part in giving edge to the anti-masonic movement. None of these societies offered a basis for popular action during a time when the number of voters was yearly augmenting, quintupling in New York state in thirty years; 57,606 in 1790, 259,387 in 1821. The committee of correspondence, which each "general meeting" left to continue political action until another met, was gradually supplanted by ward organizations, first temporary, then permanent. The great "general meeting" which met, 12,000 strong, to approve Madison's nomination and the prosecution of the war, in Philadelphia, May, 1812, called ward caucuses to appoint five delegates to a "general committee," which sat apparently for no other purpose than a more formal and weighty declaration than was possible in a tumultuous mass meeting. A similar appeal to the primary was taken in Baltimore; but the usual course with these large city meetings—of which a number were held in these stormy war times—was to approve existing nominations made by state legislatures, and to appoint the customary committee of correspondence. From cities, counties and single districts representative party government spread rapidly to the state, while the term convention began to be employed for any "general meeting" which included members of more than one place. The last nomination of the congressional caucus in 1824 made plain the disappearance of its political power, which had received a fatal blow eight years before. Eight years later the Albany caucus, which
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had dealt this blow, alarmed at the growth of a new political engine in the convention, called for a revival of the congressional caucus as an escape from the dangers of separate state nominations for the presidency. The committee of correspondence of the congressional caucus has survived in unbroken succession as the "congressional campaign committee" of to-day, appointed biennially in the joint caucuses of the senators and representatives of each political party. The influence of this body varies greatly with the strength of the national committee and the ability of its secretary and members. In a presidential year the congressional campaign committee can do little but distribute documents, the party in power in either wing of the capitol using its facilities, folding rooms, employés and what not, for this purpose. In the intercalary congressional election the powers of this committee are considerable. It makes, or has made, the assessment on officers, organizes the congressional campaign where the party is weak, sometimes assumes to decide between conflicting claimants for a regular nomination, and furnishes doubtful districts with their speakers and supplies; but in the practical work of politics all this proves of less advantage to party success than in furthering conflicting intrigues within the party for the places in its gift, in particular those which depend upon the action of the party caucus in the house when deciding upon its candidates for speaker and other officers in the organization of the lower chamber of the federal legislature.

—The state legislative caucus remained in full away upon the disappearance of its Washington rival; but it was near its end. Presidential nominations by state legislatures as a formal official act were becoming more frequent, and paved the way for a broader representation than a party legislative caucus, in which the voters of the party living in districts where it was in a minority had no representation. The "convention" of the day was steadily widening its base and increasing its influence, and what was of nearly equal importance, ceased to be regarded as a dangerous or revolutionary political tool. It is a familiar fact that the legislature of Pennsylvania early lost the high relative importance attached to state legislatures and service in them in the post-revolutionary period, and it was in this state that the nominating convention first appeared in full action. A fruitless proposal for a national convention to make an anti-slavery nomination against Monroe was made in Philadelphia in 1820; in the previous four years the nomination of state officers through a convention consisting of delegates chosen by public meetings had become familiar. In the decade opening in 1820 this became the practice in Pennsylvania, beginning five years before the like innovation in New York state, ten years before it was rooted in Massachusetts, and fifteen years before the legislative caucus had disappeared in Virginia, while in some western and south western states it survived the first highly organized national campaign of our history in 1840. A convention held in Carlisle, Pa., in February, 1821, made up of county delegates, which nominated Heister in opposition to Gov. Findlay, was one of the first state conventions on the modern plan, if not the earliest. Six years earlier, Feb. 27, 1815, when a "meeting of citizens from every part of the state" was "holden at Boston," it confined itself to an address to the independent electors of Massachusetts, and only "confirmed" the nomination of Caleb Strong and William Phillips, already reached by a legislative caucus.

—In general terms, it may be said that, up to the slack-water politics of Monroe's second election, the general meeting in the centres of population, while it bad been widened by the presence of voters from other parts of the state, assumed no strict representative capacity, and left the initiative in politics to the legislative caucus; but in the decade beginning with 1820 two changes took place: state conventions, embracing representatives from most of the counties of the state, began to make state and national nominations, and conventions for a special purpose, embracing quasi delegates from many states, began to formulate opinion on questions of national politics, and out of these separate threads was spun the national convention. So slowly did this take place that, reckoning from the earliest state convention of a representative character, it was fifteen years before all the counties of a large state were represented in a convention, and forty-eight years before all the states were represented by national conventions. These early bodies were, as was natural, most loosely organized. The Hartford convention, in spite of its official character, received from New Hampshire delegates elected by county meetings, and carelessness of form or credential was still more characteristic of the bodies which met at a later period to represent some particular form of national opinion. Early as these bodies assumed a representative character, their systematic organization came more slowly, and important political gatherings which exerted a serious influence upon current party policy were in fact nothing but voluntary assemblages of men chosen by no formal constituency. This was the case even with the protection convention which met at Harrisburg, upon the call of the Pennsylvania legislature, July 30, 1827, delegates to which were elected by counties in Pennsylvania. The address of the free trade convention which met in Philadelphia Sept. 30, 1831, was accepted by Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries, as an authoritative exposition of the political views of the party denying congress the right to levy protective duties; but the convention itself met pursuant to a call issued at the suggestion of the "New York Evening Post"; the delegates, who voted singly and with equal powers, represented states, cities, counties, mass meetings and themselves; Mississippi being "represented" by a single delegate, Mr. Pinckney, a member of congress, and the proceedings throughout point to a loose structure only possible
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while the functions and methods of a political convention were still unformed. The like was true of the protectionist convention which met in the same year in New York, of the convention of the friends of American industry held in Harrisburg in 1824, and of most interstate conventions of the day. In the first of the long series of conventions dealing with the needs of the Mississippi valley, which met at Memphis, Nov. 12, 1845, upon a call issued by the Tennessee state legislature, with John C. Calhoun as its presiding officer, delegates from eleven states, one territory, Texas, an independent power, St. Louis, and a number of counties, all met and voted on a common basis. In fact, the many interstate conventions which met for a quarter of a century after the Hartford convention, bore the same relation to the strictly organized national conventions of the post-rebellion period, that early parliaments sustain to the completely organized body now at St. Stephens.

—In most states the convention had reached a complete organization long before its representative capacity was recognized. In 1820 the "republican" legislative caucus at Albany, whose address put Tompkins and Mooers in nomination in accordance with the "settled and approved ways" of the party, was met by a bolting caucus, whose address dealt freely in the current charges of fraud against Gov. Tompkins. In the ensuing four years the constitution of 1821 added largely to the voters of the state, and the popular convention sprang into being under the control of the young leaders in the central counties "by the lakes," who were beginning, first as anti-masons, and later as whigs, their struggle against the control of politics from Albany. In ten years, the new and facile instrument of political action had driven the legislative caucus out of existence. The first conspicuous, but by no means the earliest, convention of the new order was an anti-masonic body, which met in 1826, with Thurlow Weed as its influential manager. It still took longer to go from New York to Buffalo than in 1883 to go from New York to San Francisco; and, in the loose practice of the day, any man with interest enough to take a week's journey to a political convention was accepted as a representative, with little scrutiny of his credentials, if any were required. Progress, however, toward a different procedure, was rapid. Originating in a local call in local newspapers to the "young men's republican clubs" through the state, the "republican young men's convention," which met at Utica Aug. 12, 1828, and chose W. H. Seward as its presiding officer, was a full-fledged political convention, whose neat and rapid working shows how early the hand of Thurlow Weed learned its cunning. Its record presents delegates elected and ranged by counties, a temporary and permanent organization, committees on credentials, organization and resolutions, appointed on the instant by the chairman by congressional districts, and its close presents a complete working machine. Central corresponding committees of three were named from each county, and these were instructed to complete the county organization by a committee of five in each town, while the general conduct of affairs was intrusted to a "state central corresponding committee" of twelve "to be taken from the town of Utica and vicinity," a necessary concession to the practical difficulty of bringing together a committee including members scattered over a wider area. This convention adopted a modern platform, tacking on a tariff plank as an afterthought; but it made no nominations; approving those already made of Smith Thompson and Francis Granger on the state, and Adams and Rush on the federal ticket. Resolutions were passed, but they did not as yet constitute a comprehensive platform, and action upon nominations was reached through the adoption of a resolution—a practice which still survives in many states in the apparently useless form of adding to the platform an additional resolution giving the names of the candidates who have been put in nomination by the vivâ voce choice of the convention between several candidates. The new form of party rule was already in full operation in Pennsylvania, where by 1823 the nomination of J. Andrew Shulye was reached in a convention (March 4, 1823) only after five ballots; but so loose was party organization that the state committee appointed by the convention was at this period in the habit of meeting only to call another convention, interconvention political control vesting, as it had for so many years in "committees of correspondence" appointed by general meetings in the larger cities. In Massachusetts, at the same period (Jan. 23, 1823), the first step was taken toward a convention by adding to the "mass meeting of republican members of both branches," delegates from "republican towns not represented in the legislature." Five years later the Jackson republicans in the state had fully organized on the convention plan, and both parties in 1832. In Virginia, where, as in New York, the opposition seized on the convention in 1828, the ruling legislative caucus extended its numbers in the same method by adding representatives of counties where the party being in a minority had no representatives in the legislature. Without entering into unnecessary detail, like changes took place elsewhere, and by 1840 the legislative caucus was everywhere confined to legislative issues. "Conventions appointed by the people," said "Niles' Register," in 1827, of the coming change, "appointed by the people for a specific purpose, are not liable to the objections which apply to legislative caucuses." The result has not justified the hope.

—The national convention grew by the same slow degrees. The disappearance of the congressional caucus was not felt in the eight apathetic years of Monroe's administration. The nominations of state legislative caucuses, by dividing the electoral vote, led to the serious and dangerous struggle of 1824, in which national politics sank to its lowest personal plane. A remedy was plainly necessary. A congressional
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caucus had been considered a "republican tenet," and the powerful caucus at Albany in 1823, as in 1831, urged that one be held, while the Massachusetts caucus convention, which put forward John Quincy Adams, deprecated the necessity of "nominating a candidate for the presidency by assemblies in the states." By 1827-8 it became plain that no other course was open, and the combined action of legislative caucuses and state conventions, held in general on Jan. 8, 1828, placed Jackson in the field, usually but not always, with J. C. Calhoun as candidate for vice-president. In Virginia this was done by a convention made up of fourteen senators, 157 members of the house of delegates, and twenty-three special deputies, representing in all ninety-six counties out of 109. In North Carolina and New Jersey the counties elected delegates to a nominating convention, as did the anti-Jackson men in Virginia; in Pennsylvania and New York a legislative caucus acted, and in the former a convention filled out the electoral ticket; in Vermont a "convention of freemen" made a presidential nomination, and "certain citizens of Batavia, New York," did the same. The preliminary party struggle presented, in short, every form of party action. Four years later it was clear that the concerted action between the states which had given Jackson's canvass such momentum could best be reached by a national convention. A congressional caucus better suited the Albany regency, and they pleaded for one without effect. All parties adopted the convention; but Jackson's friends in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, endeavored, in the last instance fruitlessly, to secure a nomination from a legislative caucus, while Clay's friends obtained like action in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Louisiana, Kentucky and Maryland. The convention was at this period the favorite device of the opponents of the administration, and their national convention was the best organized, although the selection of its delegates was made by loose methods which early disappeared. The whig convention, which met in Baltimore, Dec. 12, 1831, was called by a caucus of the Maryland legislature. This call proposed a representation for each state equal to that enjoyed in the electoral college, and suggested, but did not require, the election of delegates by congressional districts. In Maine and Pennsylvania this was done; in New Hampshire a legislative caucus chose delegates; in Massachusetts "a convention of 200 members" acted for the state in expressing a presidential choice, besides making state nominations; in Connecticut harmonious action was taken by a legislative caucus and a state convention, the districts, in addition, choosing their own delegates; in New York a state convention chose the entire state delegation of two at large and one for each congressional district; while Maryland and most of the southern states acted through conventions. These irregular elections were order itself compared with the loose election of delegates to the democratic convention which nominated Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, at Baltimore, May 23, 1832, where the vote of Pennsylvania was cast by a group of self-appointed delegates. At these early national conventions each delegate cast one vote, except as a vote by states was required, when the electoral apportionment came into play, and the rule requiring a two-thirds majority in making a nomination was adopted by the democratic convention of 1832. This rule was re-enacted by the democratic convention which met at Baltimore, May 20, 1835, and has become the common law of the party in its national conventions and in many state and county democratic conventions in the south. At the same time the unit rule, giving each state delegation the right to cast its entire state vote as a majority of its members should direct, was also adopted, and, like the other, has gained the sanction of unbroken democratic usage. In whig and republican conventions neither of these rules has obtained, although an effort to enforce the last led to a long and bitter struggle in the republican national convention at Chicago, in June, 1880.

—As late as 1852 the call for a democratic national convention treated a congressional caucus of democratic congressmen as one basis for the summons; and the action of the whig Washington caucus, met to nominate a speaker in 1851, was expected to furnish the common grounds on which northern and southern whigs could meet in a "nationalized convention." These were the last traces of congressional influence in the highly organized body which has now, in the practical selection of a president, taken the place of the electoral college, the conventions of the two parties naming the two candidates to whom voters are of necessity restricted. It was forty years, 1831 to 1872, from the first national convention until one met in which all the states and territories were represented; but the work of organization is now completed, and the only change in party organization lies in the direction of greater safeguards about the caucus or primary in which the first delegates are selected, who in successive stages choose delegates to the conventions above. As it is no intention of this article to give a history of American politics, a further account of the working of the convention is unnecessary. It will be sufficient to describe the general working of party government.

—Precedent, custom, and the slow, unwritten development of representative party government, render it impossible to make any general exposition of the present system which will not be subject to many exceptions. On the one hand, in the loosely settled south and extreme west, selfnomination is still in use for all subordinate and local offices without the interposition of a convention, and the canvass is conducted by the personal solicitation of candidates, the work of the hustings being unchanged, but spread over wearisome square leagues of territory, instead of being concentrated around a polling booth. State officers are now nominated in all states by conventions,
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but where a system of permanent local nominating bodies does not exist, the state convention still partakes largely of the character of a legislative caucus, and the county convention is a meeting of the narrow group which carries on the government of each county at its court house; political action being largely confined to state and county office holders. On the other hand, in nearly all cities of over 100,000 in population, and in some, like Albany, still smaller, local political action and representation in state conventions are decided by a continuous political organization which in each party holds annual primaries, not to send delegates to a convention, but to choose the members of its governing body, ordinarily known as a "general committee." This body is self-elective under the thinly disguised forms of popular selection in primaries. Highly organized state conventions, like those in New York, find themselves unable, after years of effort, to break through this organization of office-holders and tax-eaters to reach the voters on whom party action should rest. In addition, while the theory of American party government contemplates the convention as coming fresh from the spontaneous initiative of the people, in fact it has become in many states, and is tending to become in all, a body which receives its initiative from the standing state central committee. This body, in New York and several of the larger states, has a member to each congressional district, the delegates to the state convention from these districts meeting apart in groups to select the committeeman from the district. In Pennsylvania and a number of other states the districts electing to the upper state chamber are the basis of membership. As the apportionment of conventions is in general by the party vote, and these districts are laid out by population, in the republican party the allotment of members of the state central committee by these districts gives the centres of population a preponderance in the permanent committee which they do not possess in the convention, and do not contribute in elections to the voting strength of the party. The one exception is in Pennsylvania, where the city vote is republican. The state committee organizes, immediately after its appointment, by the selection of a chairman and secretary, with whom are associated from three to five members as an executive committee. Unless some extraordinary exigency arises, like the resignation of a nominee, vacancies on the ticket being usually filled by the committee, the state committee does not meet until it issues the call for the next convention. The executive committee of five or seven is through the campaign the real centre of party management, and the actual work of party direction devolves on the chairman and secretary. The first is nearly always a man of wealth, with a taste for politics and skill in intrigue; the second attends to the manifold details of the campaign, and is assisted by a corps of clerks in the work of issuing assessments to the office-holders of the party, distributing documents, and conducting the wide and varied correspondence of a political headquarters. The chairman, the secretary and the executive committee constitute, therefore, a quasi party ministry, selected by the party parliament or convention. The delicate work of raising and distributing funds, of making engagements for speakers, of arranging local disputes, of watching over the interests of the state nominees, of arranging the "trades" and "deals" by which great masses of votes are secured in the large cities, or smaller schemes of corruption prepared in the rural districts, is all in the hands of these managers, to whom, if they are fit for their work, run all the threads of political intrigue. In a large state, where hundreds of local officers are chosen, besides state officers and the legislature, the candidates in the field will be between 1,500 and 2,000, and it is the first business of the officers of a state committee to know the strength, the motives, the support and the character of each of these candidates. Aside from a laborious canvass of the voters, school district by school district, which even in large states often accounts for all but 5 or 6 per cent. of the vote, minute information is gleaned in great central states as to the precise political condition of each polling district over a territory a quarter as large as France. Supplemental to the regular party machinery of a state committee, congressional, district, county, city, town and ward committees, an astute manager, like Mr. Tilden, will have from three to five correspondents in each election district of a state, making, in a state like New York, from 12,000 to 15,000 persons whose addresses are registered, and whose standing is known. To the general observer, an American political contest is a seething battle, in which the noise of the captains and their shouting, charges and counter-charges, the din of speakers and the clatter of newspapers, work their way to an unexpected result. To the few managers who attain success in the conduct of a campaign, even a great state like Ohio, New York, Indiana or Pennsylvania lies clearly mapped to its uttermost bounds, and a host of signs indicate from day to day the drift of public feeling and the intentions of voters, the plans of candidates and the purposes of the opposition.

—The minute personal acquaintance which makes this knowledge forcible, constitutes the real strength of the "machine" in American politics, which, like all organization that produces real results, is not a venal accident, but the fruit of the patient, continuous work of years. The men who make up the party ministry, intrusted with its direction, are not speakers, for speaking would be wasted on their work; nor political thinkers, for their object is not to carry out a policy, but to win an election. They are generally almost unknown to the public, and they have all the contempt of the professional expert for amateurs in their chosen field. Beginning with the careful management of a ward, they have risen by the rude natural selection of political strife; and conventions,
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while they often make mistakes in candidates, rarely blunder in their selection of managers. Inevitably, by the time the members of an executive committee, and still more the chairman and secretary, have "run" a campaign, particularly a successful campaign, their influence is felt and their personality known throughout the party organization. The next summer, when the state committee meets, and issues a call for the next convention, which will select its successor, the managers are in a vastly better position to touch the springs of party action and secure a convention to their liking than any one else. Nor does this control of the convention end with the election of delegates. In theory, each convention is still a public meeting which organizes itself; in practice, by unwritten law now almost invariably followed, the chairman of the state committee, acting as its representative, calls the convention to order, and proposes the "temporary" chairman. This chairman, whose election is so much a matter of course that in New York state, for instance, the selection of another chairman has occurred only once in both parties for twenty-five years, appoints the crucial committees on a permanent organization and on credentials; the one decides the officers of the convention, and the other its roll. While formally made by the "temporary" chairman, these committees are actually selected by the state committee, each of its members naming one for his congressional or state senatorial district. To personal influence with the party organization in the selection of delegates, the state committee, and particularly its executive committee, add, therefore, a profound influence in directing the action and determining the character of the convention, while it is still an inchoate body. If state and other conventions sat, as legislatures do, for a term of months, the discovery of debate would disclose other leaders; but conventions very rarely sit over two days, and usually only one. The practical result is, that acquaintance and knowledge of men, acquired beforehand, is everything in the swift canvass and rapid combinations of twenty-four hours. In all this, the campaign manager has an overpowering advantage. He accomplishes his results in the brief and wakeful night, while his amateur opponent is marshaling his forces and ascertaining on whom he can depend. The wonder is, not that the machine wins, but that it is ever beaten.

—A comprehensive union of the scattered members of party organization has never yet been successfully attempted. It was proposed in 1880 by the national democratic committee, that in future the chairmen of state committees should be elected to membership in its ranks, that the members of state committees should preside over district committees, and so on down; but this artificial plan collapsed at the start through the natural jealousy of state managers. In both parties each series of committees acts independently in its own sphere. In the presidential election the national executive committee overshadows all the rest, but its immediate efforts are confined to doubtful states; the state executive committee in like manner is most active and exerts the widest influence where party success is most doubtful; and, while least is heard of them by the general public, and least known except by politicians, the little local committees which "run" a ward or township are the most vital and permanent of all. An organization, adopted in 1882 by the democratic party in Pennsylvania, has carried party evolution in a state to its last form in the United States by linking the state committee to these local bodies through a provision that each county organization, with an apportionment based on state senatorial districts, shall elect a member to the state committee. This body has, therefore, become permanent and independent of the state convention, the party having provided itself, by a curious and unconscious imitation of the federal government, with a permanent executive. Add to this the progress made in some rural Pennsylvania counties in bringing 90 to 95 per cent. of the registered party voters to the polls in choosing the county organization, and it will be seen that this state, as in 1820-30, has probably anticipated the inevitable path of party development elsewhere.

—I. The National Convention. The call for a national convention in all organized parties is issued by the national committee, a body consisting, in the democratic party, of a member from each state, and, in the republican party, of a member from each state, and territory. In both cases this member has been selected by the delegation from each state or territory at the preceding national convention. The organization of the committee takes place immediately after the convention, its choice of a chairman and executive committee is usually greatly influenced by the wishes of the presidential candidate, and to this select body is generally committed the immediate conduct of a presidential campaign. After the campaign is over, the committee rarely meets until it assembles to call the next convention. Its membership is generally, not always, made up of men both of wealth and political influence, as a campaign assessment is expected from each member, and a large sum from the chairman; in the two campaigns, 1876 and 1880, $25,000 or more in each party. The call names the time, place and apportionment of the convention. In a republican convention the call provides for a body twice the size of the electoral college, with two delegates from each territory. In a democratic national convention, down to 1880, the number of delegates was an indifferent matter, each state delegation casting a vote equal to its electoral vote; but as the delegates are in general twice this number, and are not always required to act as a unit, half-votes result, being the choice of single delegates. In 1880 each state was directed to send twice its electoral representation. The republican national convention in 1880 directed its national committee to prepare before the next national convention a
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plan for the apportionment of representation in future conventions by district representation and upon the party vote. Twice in a republican convention the candidate has been decided by the vote of territorial delegates, whose votes carried R. B. Hayes in 1876, and J. A. Garfield in 1880, across the majority line. The national committee, in whose meetings written proxies are by usage allowed, besides issuing the call, decides the provisional roll of the convention pending organization, and passes in this way upon contests, provides the temporary organization, and has charge of the approaches to the convention—three most important prerogatives. In republican conventions the adoption of a platform precedes the choice of a candidate; in democratic conventions it succeeds the nomination. In both, while the term "ballot" is used, the voting for candidates is vivâ voce, the "chairman" of each delegation announcing the numerical vote of his state. If this is questioned in a republican convention, the roll of the convention can be called by the secretary of the convention. In democratic conventions it is the rule, not without exceptions, to treat the action of a delegation as final; and a majority of one, if the delegation be instructed to vote as a unit, is permitted to direct the entire vote of the largest state. The theory of the republican convention is, that the delegates standing for congressional districts are chosen by those districts, either directly by conventions in them or by the delegates from those districts to the state convention, acting as a separate group; the state convention merely certifying this result, the selection and control of the state convention being limited to the four delegates-at-large apportioned by each state. This theory was questioned by the supporters of ex-President Grant's nomination in 1880; but the convention established district representation as the common law of the party. The democratic national convention is, on the other hand, organized upon the theory that the entire state delegation is appointed and controlled by the state convention, which acts for the party in the state as a whole. Its instructions are therefore mandatory, and are so recognized by the party convention. In both parties the call for the national convention is followed by a call issued by each state committee for a state convention, to choose delegates. In New England, and in some of the western states, each district chooses its pair of delegates, and the state convention chooses the state delegates-at-large; but in a majority of states the work is done at a single convention, the delegates from each district presenting their choice, and the convention passing on the entire list. Inflexible usage requires residence, within a state or district, of their delegates, who are in general a picked body of most able men, averaging above the level of congressmen. The importance of the issue, the size and character of the assemblage, the immense throng of spectators, and the rapidity of its decisions, make a national convention the most imposing and interesting body in American politics.

—II. The State Convention. State conventions have been held since the war by each party before every general election, for the nomination of state candidates and the adoption of a platform, and, as above stated, once in four years, to choose delegates to a national convention. The call is in all cases issued by the state central committee, originating with the previous convention. The powers of a state committee over the preliminaries of a state convention are like those described above in national affairs. In addition, in New York state, the state committee names the committee which reports a permanent organization. The guard of a state committee over the hall in which a regular convention sits is sometimes insufficient to prevent its forcible capture, as in the New York democratic convention in 1859, and the Massachusetts democratic convention in 1878. The control of a state committee will not convert a minority in a convention into a majority; but it is invaluable in enabling a small and brittle majority to carry out the wishes of skillful leaders by giving it a definite course to pursue. The apportionment of delegates to a state convention is still, in a majority of the states, upon the basis of the lower branch of the state legislature; but in many states, as in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, etc., in both parties, and in New York and most other states, in the republican party, an apportionment is based upon the last party vote. The size of state conventions varies from 1,200 to 1,400 in New Jersey to small bodies of between 100 and 200; the average being between 300 and 500. Substitutes are always permitted; and as late as 1883 the state democratic convention in Ohio contained county delegations on the "mass system," a large number of voters coming en masse from a county and casting its apportioned vote in the convention.

—III. Local Party Government. The county convention in rural districts consists of delegates from the towns, and is, in its county committee and general working, a miniature of the state party machinery, and needs no special description. Conventions and committees exist, likewise, for congressional districts, and while conventions meet for every possible nomination, a standing committee is infrequently appointed by these bodies. A sketch of local party machinery in New York city is given in the article on CAUCUS. Primaries for the purpose of providing permanent party machinery, aside from those held to select delegates to nominating conventions, are also held by the republican party in Philadelphia, and by the democratic party in Jersey City, N. J., and in Albany, N. Y., in each case leading to the corrupt control of party machinery, while a party democratic registry exists in South Carolina. In addition to the network of districts thrown over an American city, Philadelphia and New York are, for instance, divided into congressional, state, senatorial and representative, aldermanic and judicial districts, besides electing county and
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city officers. Taking both parties together, from fifty to sixty conventions are held in each of these cities on the eve of an important election. None but professional politicians are able either to understand or follow this complicated mill for grinding out candidates, and a permanent local organization relieves the busy citizen of all concern in the matter by providing him with a choice between two equally bad nominations.

—As a result, the final evolution of party government in the United States has been the appearance in city politics of self-appointed committees, of which the Philadelphia "committee of 100" is a most conspicuous instance, made up of leading merchants who have assumed political control, "indorsing" party nominations, furnishing tickets and workers at the polls, prosecuting repeaters, conducting long investigations into city offices, and securing the passage of needed legislation. The downfall of Tweed was in great measure due to such a committee, the "committee of 70," and the appearance in American politics of such committees has so far uniformly been for good. They are in general accepted as more closely expressing the popular will than city conventions, and in time such committees are likely to play a wider part. Simple as American party government appears in this outline, it must be remembered that it places the voter at many removes from the exercise of power. In dealing with a presidential nomination, the voter, for instance, shares in choosing delegates to a ward convention, which chooses delegates to a city or county convention, which sends delegates to a state convention, which names the delegates who name the candidate. The surprise is, that the popular will is felt at all through these removes, no one of which has the guarantee of law save the first in some states, and the action of nominating conventions in Ohio, where bribery in such conventions is made a crime.

PATENT OFFICE

PATENT OFFICE. Although the issue of American patents is nearly coeval with the government of the United States, the first creation of the patent office, with a commissioner of patents, dates from the year 1836. Prior to that date patents were issued directly by the department of state. By act of July 4, 1836, an office denominated the patent office was created, to be attached to the department of state, and a fire-proof building for its use was provided for. The chief officer, styled the commissioner of patents, was required to perform all acts touching the granting of patents for new and useful inventions, with a salary of $3,000, and seven clerks. Patents were to be signed by the secretary of state, and countersigned by the commissioner. The number of patents issued in the earlier years was very small, varying, from 1837 to 1847, from about 400 to 600 per annum; but since 1865 the business has enormously increased, until now the number of patents annually issued is about 16,000, with fees (averaging $35 for each patent) amounting to about $800,000 per annum. The patent office is not only self-supporting, the fees paying all running expenses, with the salaries of some 350 clerks, but it actually pays into the treasury of the United States an annual surplus of about $200,000. It has been urged with some force, that the inventors of the country should not be taxed beyond the actual cost of administering the business connected with the registry of patents, and that a large reduction of patent fees ought in equity to be made.

—By the act of 1836 patents were granted for fourteen years, with the right of extension for seven years longer, at the discretion of the commissioner of patents. In 1861 the law now in force was enacted, making the term of original patents seventeen years; and no extension for patents granted since March 2, 1861, is allowed except by special act of congress. A very few patents have been thus renewed, and many more have been asked for, upon the plea of insufficient remuneration to their owners. The last patents extendable by the patent office expired in 1875.

—The commissioner of patents is required to make an annual report of the business of the office, with a list of patents issued during the year. This valuable series of reports began with 1837, and for a series of years included a report upon arts and manufactures and upon agriculture in one annual volume. With the year 1849 began the issue of the agricultural report in a separate volume, which was continued until 1861, after which the commissioner of patents no longer
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issued an agricultural report, the department of agriculture having been created in 1862. The series of patent office reports, issued annually with specifications and [sometimes] drawings, was continued until 1871 (the set, 1837-71, numbering sixty-five volumes on Arts and Manufactures, and thirteen volumes on Agriculture), after which the method of publication of patents was radically changed, the annual reports being succeeded by the following publications: 1. Specifications and Drawings of Patents issued from the United States Patent Office, May 30, 1871, to December, 1883. Of these, 196 volumes in quarto (weekly for the first year, monthly from July, 1872,) have been issued. 2. Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office (weekly) January, 1872, to December, 1883, 24 vols. 8vo. This contains the full list of patents, decisions in patent cases, etc., with drawings in reduced size. 3. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents. These contain, since 1872, a bare list or index of patents annually issued, without specifications or drawings, but with references to the Official Gazette and monthly volumes of specifications, and a statement of the aggregate business of the office for the calendar year. Besides these, the office has issued a "Subject-matter Index of Patents for Inventions issued by the U. S. Patent Office from 1790 to 1873," 3 vols., Washington, 1873. There should also be noted as covering the comparatively small record of inventive art from 1790 to 1837, "A List of Patents granted by the U. S. from April 10, 1790, to Dec. 31, 1836, with Appendix of Reports of the Patent Office in 1823, 1830 and 1831," 8vo., Washington, 1872. Pamphlets containing the patent laws, the rules of practice in the patent office, etc., are furnished to all applicants.

—The patent office building was burned in December, 1836, with the models accumulated, many of which were replaced by act of congress. Again, in 1877, a part of the office, with several thousand models, was destroyed by fire, but the loss was largely repaired by the manufacture of new models.

—On the creation of the department of the interior in 1849, the patent office was transferred to that department, where it now remains, all patents being signed by the secretary of the interior, and countersigned by the commissioner of patents. The patent office, with its vast accumulation of 275,000 models, occupies the larger portion of the great marble building known as the interior department. The arrangement and display of models of patents in its long halls is extensive and interesting, and the heavy additions of each year will soon require much more space than is now at command.

—The following is a list of commissioners of patents, with the commencement of the term of service of each:

A. R. SPOFFORD.

PATENTS, AND THE PATENT SYSTEM.

PATENTS, AND THE PATENT SYSTEM. The patent system has assumed during the nineteenth century an important office in the economy of modern industrial communities. Its development is closely interwoven with the phenomenal material progress and the immense extension of applied science which distinguish that period. Especially has this system been identified with the extraordinary development of the physical resources of the United States. The patent laws have been extended and improved to meet or anticipate the wants of the growing nation, and now, in its more modern form, the patent system may almost be said to be a peculiarly American institution. It is estimated that at present more than two-fifths of the world's important inventions originate in the United States. The records of our patent office are sought for and studied by the inventors and the scientists of every nation, and the wisdom of our advanced patent policy is almost universally admitted. Sir William Thomson said, in 1876: "If Europe does not amend its patent laws * * America will speedily become the nursery of important inventions for the world." No feature of our federal system has been proven of greater economic importance than the patent system. It will be treated, as fully as the limits of this article will permit, under the following heads: I. History of the System in England and America; II. The Existing American Patent Law, and the Procedure under it; III. The General Policy of a System of Patent Laws; IV. Changes in the Existing Law which would be desirable; V. Foreign Patent Laws.

—1. HISTORY. 1. In England. The origin of the patent system has been remotely traced to the guild monopolies which were a dominant feature of the urban industries of mediæval Europe. In its modern aspect and theory, however, the system bears no resemblance to the exclusive and grasping trades customs which brought the guilds into reproach; and it is generally conceded that the existing practice of letters patent for inventions is distinctively English in its origin. The form of the grant of a patent of invention can be directly traced to the exercise of the ancient prerogative of the English crown in its grants of exclusive privileges. The arbitrary and indiscriminate exercise of this prerogative resulted in the oppressive and galling monopolies which were abolished in the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century. The grant of monopolies for inventions, on the other hand, seems always to have been regarded as just
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and constitutional. These were excepted from the sweeping prohibitions of the great statute of monopolies, enacted in 1624; and upon the provisos of that act there has been reared the modern English patent system, which in its essential features has been extended into nearly every civilized state.

—The earliest recorded exercise of the prerogative of the English crown, in a manner analogous to the grant of a patent, was the grant by Edward III. to two aldermen of a patent of privilege that they and their assigns should have the sole making of the philosopher's stone. Privileges of this nature, although rare at this early period, seem not to have been considered anomalous, for it is stated in a case reported in the Year Book, part iv., 40, Edw. III., fol. 17, 18, that arts and sciences which are for the public good are greatly favored in the law, and the king, as chief guardian of the common weal, has power and authority by his prerogative to grant many privileges, although prima facie they appear to be clearly against common right. On the other hand, the early popular and judicial disapproval of mere monopolies is shown by the fact, that about the end of the reign of Edward III., John Peechie, of London, was severely punished for procuring a license under the great seal for the exclusive sale of sweet wines in London. (3 Inst., 181.) Two centuries later, grants of patents, as well as of mere monopolies, had become less unusual. The reports of cases decided in the reign of Elizabeth contain dicta from which it appears, that, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, the English lawyers and judges had attained to something approaching the modern conception of patents. In the ninth year of Elizabeth a patent was granted to a Mr. Hastinges of the sole trade for several years of making frisadoes, in consideration that he had brought the method of making them from Amsterdam. This patent was considered valid until it was shown that some clothiers had, before its date, made baize of a similar material. (Noy Rep., 182.) In another case decided in this reign, a patent having been granted for the sole and only use of a sieve, or instrument for melting lead, it was said in the court of exchequer chamber, that the question was, whether it was newly invented by the grantee, whereby he might have the privilege of exclusive power over it, or else used before, in which case they were of opinion that he should not have the sole use of it. (Noy Rep., 183.) But the strongest of these early cases is Darcy vs. Allein, decided 44 Elizabeth, which contains the following: "Where any man by his own charge or industry, or by his own wit or invention, brings any new trade into the realm, or any engine tending to the furtherance of a trade, that never was used before; and that for the good of the realm; in such cases the king may grant to him a monopoly patent for some reasonable time, until the subjects may learn the same, in consideration of the good that he doth bring, by his invention, to the commonwealth; otherwise not."

—These cases contain the common law germs of our existing systems of patent law. In the next reign was passed (1624) the statute of monopolies, which seems to be the first statutory recognition of patents for inventions, as it is also the final parliamentary denunciation of mere monopolies. The proviso of this statute, which is still the foundation of English patent law, is as follows: "Provided also, and be it enacted, that any declaration before mentioned shall not extend to any letters patent and grants of privileges for the term of fourteen years or under, hereafter to be made, of the sole working and making of any manner of new manufacture within the realm, to the true and first inventor or inventors of such manufacture, which others at the time of making such letters patent shall not use, so as also they be not contrary to law, or hurtful of trade, or generally inconvenient." This statute is regarded as merely declaratory of the common law, and the following essentials of a valid patent are enumerated by Sir Edward Coke in his "Institutes": "First, it must be for the term of fourteen years or under. Secondly, it must be granted to the first and true inventor. Thirdly, it must be of such manufactures, which any other at the making of such letters patents did not use; for albeit it were newly invented, yet if any other did use it at the making of the letters patents, or grant of the priviledge, it is declared and enacted to be void by this act. Fourthly, the priviledge must not be contrary to law: such a priviledge as is consonant to law, must be substantially and essentially newly invented; but if the substance was in esse before, and a new addition thereunto, though that addition make the former more profitable, yet is it not a new manufacture in law; and so it was resolved in the exchequer chamber, Pasch, 15 Eliz., in Bircot's case for a priviledge concerning the preparing and melting, etc., of lead ore; for there it was said, that that was to put but a new button to an old coat; and it is much easier to adde then to invent. And there it was also resolved, that if the new manufacture be substantially invented according to law, yet no old manufacture in use can be prohibited. Fifthly, nor mischievous to the state by raising of prices of commodities at home. In every such new manufacture that deserves a priviledge, there must be urgens necessitas, and evidens utilitas. Sixthly, nor to the hurt of trade. This is very material and evident. Seventhly, nor generally inconvenient. There was a new invention found out heretofore that bonnets and caps might be thickened in a filling mill, by which means more might be thickened and filled in one day then by the labours of fourscore men, who got their livings by it. It was ordained that bonnets and caps should be thickened and fulled by the strength of men, and not in a fulling mill, for it was holden inconvenient to turn so many labouring men to idlenesse. If any of these seven qualities fail, the priviledge is declared and enacted to be void by this act, * * and yet this act maketh them no better then they should have been, if this act had
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never been made, but only except and exempt them out of the purvieu and penalty of this law." (Coke, 3 Inst., 184.)

—In spite of its crude economic notions, this commentary is an interesting and instructive epitome of the early English patent law. It throws light upon the origin of not a few of the legal doctrines which are the foundation of the patent laws of more modern times. Moreover it may be regarded as embodying nearly all of what continued to be the learning in this branch of jurisprudence for more than a century and a half after Coke's time. The system continued in a comparatively rudimentary condition until near the end of the last century. One or two incidents in its history should, however, be noticed. In 1639 a proclamation was issued, abolishing "all patents for new inventions not put in practice from the date of their respective grants." A still more important change was effected during Queen Anne's reign. Prior to this time the only recorded description of the invention or discovery protected by patent, was contained in a few words, giving merely the name of the process or the purpose of the invention. But about this time the practice was introduced, appearing first in Hill's patent granted in 1713, of requiring a patentee to cause a specification or complete description of his invention "to be inrolled in Her Majestie's High Court of Chancery" within a certain time, generally two or three months, of the date of the patent. This practice ultimately became general; and the theory then arose that the grant of a patent constituted a sort of contract between the patentee and the state, whereby the patentee was protected in the exclusive practice of his invention in consideration of his furnishing in the specification a complete description of his invention for the public benefit after the expiration of his patent. The specifications of some of the earlier patents throw a curious light upon the economic notions of the people. Weisenthal's specification (1755) was for "Working Fine Thread in Needlework, after the Manner of Dresden Needlework, and for erecting a Manufacture of that Sort in this Kingdom so as to be of Public Utility, and enable Poor Girls of Eight Years Old to maintain themselves without being burthensome to the Parish to which they belong." Other patents were granted for the few crude scientific discoveries and inventions of the time. No material progress was made, however, in the further development of the patent system until, at the end of the last century, a series of important discoveries was made which heralded the beginning of a new era in the physical sciences. These inventions were patented, and the patents became the subjects of contests which ended in a series of adjudications, beginning with Arkwright's case in 1785, in the course of which there were discussed and settled many of the fundamental principles of patent law. The inventions of Watt, and Hargreave, and Crompton, and Cartwright, soon directed attention upon the patent laws. Stimulated by the example of these men and by the hope of reward, men began to devote their energies to devising improvements upon the crude methods then employed in the industrial arts. The number of inventions rapidly increased; and while in 1750 the number of English patents granted was only seven, in 1800, ninety-six were issued; in 1825, two hundred and fifty; and the British patent office now issues annually between three and four thousand patents. The last steps in the development of the English system were the passage of the act 5 and 6 Wm. IV., c. 83, in 1835, and the patent law amendment act in 1852, which brought the system into its present condition; and finally, during the present year (1883), there has been passed an "Act to amend and consolidate the law relating to patents for inventions, registration of designs and trademarks.' This act makes certain changes in the present law which are to go into effect Jan. 1, 1884.

—2. In America. A few of the earlier British patents, as Cumberland's patent (1720), were granted for "Our said Kingdom of Great Britain, called England, our Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed; our Kingdom of Ireland, and our Colonies and Plantacions in America." Letters patent for inventions appear also to have been granted by the different colonies before the revolution. In 1641, Samuel Winslow, of Massachusetts, obtained from the general court of that colony a patent for his process of making salt; and in 1656 a son of Gov. Winthrop obtained a patent for another salt making process. Patents were similarly granted in Connecticut during the colonial period; but no organized patent system existed here until after the establishment of the federal government. The basis of the American patent system is the clause in the United States constitution which confers upon congress power "To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Patents thus became the subject of federal legislation, and in pursuance of the power so delegated, congress has passed a series of patent laws, commencing with the act of 1790. Under this act letters patent were granted upon "any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine or device, or any improvement therein, not before known or used," for "any term not exceeding fourteen years." The application for a patent was made to the secretary of war, the secretary of state and the attorney general, and it required the concurrent action of two of those officials to issue the patent. The specification or description of the invention was certified by the attorney general, and the patent on its issue was sealed with the great seal and signed by the president. No distinction was made in this act between foreigners and citizens, and there was no examination of the novelty or patentability of inventions. In 1793 a second act was passed superseding the former one, and making changes in the system. Patents were issued only to citizens of the United States, and applicants were
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required, before United States patents could issue to them, to surrender any patents that might have been granted to them by the different states before the federal government was established. This statute also provided that the application should be made to the secretary of state, and that interferences between applications should be decided by a board of three arbitrators. A government fee of $30 was established, and a penalty of triple damages imposed on infringers. Supplemental acts were passed in 1794 and 1800, the latter of which extended patent privileges to aliens who at the time of making application had been for two years resident in the United States, and required all applications made pursuant to that act to be accompanied by an oath to the effect that, to the best of the applicant's knowledge and belief, the invention "had not been known or used in this or any foreign country." A few years later the constitutional question arose whether a state still had power to grant patents, notwithstanding the provision of the constitution giving power of legislation on patents to congress. In 1798 an act had been passed by the New York legislature granting to Robert R. Livingston "the sole and exclusive right and privilege of constructing, making, using, employing and navigating all and every species or kinds of boats or watercraft, which might be urged or impelled through the water, by the force of fire or steam, in all creeks, rivers, bays and waters whatsoever, within the territory and jurisdiction of this state," for the term of twenty years from the passage of the act, provided that he should, within twelve months, construct a boat of at least twenty tons capacity to be propelled by steam, the mean progress of which, against the current or tide of the Hudson river, should be not less than four miles an hour. Livingston having failed to accomplish this, the same provisions were re-enacted in 1803, and again in 1808, securing like privileges to Livingston and Robert Fulton. Steam navigation having now become an accomplished fact through the efforts of these men, others undertook, without license from them, to use the same motive power in navigating the Hudson. Livingston and Fulton then applied to the state courts for an injunction, which was at first denied on the ground that the act of the New York legislature was contrary to the clause of the United States constitution giving congress power to legislate upon letters patent. But upon appeal, Thompson and Kent, JJ., held that the act was constitutional, on the ground that federal jurisdiction over patents was not exclusive, and the injunction was granted (Livingston vs. Van Ingen, 9 Johns, 506.) Similar privileges were then granted in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, to citizens of those States. The question of the constitutionality of this legislation was subsequently raised in the United States supreme court, in Gibbons vs. Ogden, 9 Wheat., 1. The precise point was not decided, however, the New York act being held to be unconstitutional, because in contravention of the laws of the United States regulating commerce. Since that time, however, notwithstanding the eminent dissenting authority of Chancellor Kent and Judge Tucker, the opinion has prevailed that federal jurisdiction over patents is exclusive, and the question must now be regarded as so settled.

—In 1819 a law was enacted by congress, giving the United States circuit courts original jurisdiction of all actions arising under the patent or copyright laws of the United States. The first provision for the "reissue" of defective patents was made in the act of 1832, which also provided for the annual publication of the lists of expired patents, and established a system of renewing or extending patents about to expire upon application to congress. Another statute, passed in 1832, extended patent privileges still further by permitting every resident alien who had duly made a preliminary declaration of his intention to become a citizen, to obtain patents on condition of introducing the inventions into public use in the United States within a year of the date of the patents.

—Such was the earlier legislation of congress upon patents; and although many important inventions and discoveries were protected under these laws, the patent system as a whole remained as yet in a comparatively undeveloped state. It is stated that from 1790 till 1803 the whole business of issuing patents was practically done by one of the clerks in the department of state. In 1803 Dr. Thornton was appointed by Jefferson superintendent of this branch, and held the office until 1827. The whole number of patents issued from 1790 to 1836, a period of forty-six years, was only 10,020. The patent office now issues more than that number every year. During this period, however, the elementary principles of law governing patent rights were settled in the courts, and the foundation was laid in the decisions of Marshall and Story for the subsequent development of that branch of jurisprudence.

—The year 1836 marks an era in the development of the American system. In that year an act was passed which superseded the earlier legislation, and in an elaborate series of provisions, brought the patent system into something like its present condition The patent office was established as a branch of the department of state, and a staff of officials created, with the commissioner of patents at the head. The most important feature of the law was the provision requiring a preliminary examination to be made into the novelty and patentability of each invention before issuing the patent. This was a radical innovation, but it has proved a beneficent one. This law also made provision for the decision of interfering applications, and enabled aliens, after a year's residence in the United States, and under the conditions of the former act, to take out patents. The government fee for citizens and resident aliens was fixed at $30, while for subjects of Great Britain it was $500, and for other aliens $300. The reissue practice was confirmed and extended, and provision was
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made for the filing of caveats on incompleted inventions. The recovery in suits for infringement was restricted to the actual damage proven, except in cases where exemplary damages were proper, when triple damages were allowed. Exclusive jurisdiction in patent causes was conferred upon the United States circuit courts, and a board, consisting of the commissioner of patents, the secretary of state and the solicitor of the treasury, was constituted for the purpose of hearing and passing upon applications for the extension of patents. In certain cases extensions of seven years were allowed. Provision was also made in this law for the record of assignments of patents, for the establishment of the patent office library, and for the exhibition of the models which had accumulated since the beginning of the system. In that same year (1836), however, the burning of the patent office destroyed the interesting collection of models, as well as many valuable records, of the earlier patent system. A statute passed in the following year established a method of restoring or replacing the more important of the destroyed models and records, and also introduced the practice of filing disclaimers in cases where the original patents were void through inadvertently excessive claims. The act of 1839 provided that the existence of a foreign patent more than six months prior to application here, should not be a bar to obtaining a United States patent, except in cases where the invention had been introduced into common and public use in this country; but the United States patent was made to terminate fourteen years from the date of the foreign patent. A further provision of this act was that "no patent shall be held to be invalid by reason of purchase, sale or use prior to the application for a patent, except on proof of abandonment of such invention to the public, or that such purchase, sale or prior use has been for more than two years prior to such application for a patent." In 1842 provision was made for patenting designs for the term of seven years, and patented articles were required to be stamped "Patented," with the date of patenting, for the neglect of which a penalty was imposed. The system was further extended by the acts of 1848 and 1849, which latter act made the patent office a branch of the department of the interior. Minor changes were made in the succeeding years, and in 1861 an important act was passed empowering the commissioner to establish rules governing procedure in the patent office. The term of patents for inventions was extended to its present length of seventeen years, and the former laws discriminating between citizens and aliens were repealed. A uniform scale of fees was adopted, like that now in force; and in interference cases witnesses were compelled to attend and testify as before a court. A board of examiners in chief was constituted, intermediate between the examiners and the commissioner, to hear appeals from the former. Finally, by the act of 1870, the former legislation was revised and consolidated, and the system brought into its present condition. The provisions of this patent code are contained in some seventy sections, the effect of which will be considered under the statement of existing law. Meanwhile, the number of inventions has enormously increased. In 1837, 435 patents were issued; in 1860, 4,819; and in 1882, 18,467. These figures adequately represent the rate of the growth of the system and its present extent.

—II. EXISTING LAW AND PROCEDURE. Under the present act of congress "any person who has invented or discovered any new and useful art, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, not known or used by others in this country, and not patented or described in any printed publication in this or any foreign country, before his invention or discovery thereof, and not in public use or on sale for more than two years prior to his application, unless the same is proved to have been abandoned, may, upon payment of the duty required by law and other due proceedings had, obtain a patent therefor."

—1. Subject Matter. It will be observed that provision is made in the statute for patenting four classes of inventions or discoveries: arts, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter.

—The statute term "art" is intended and construed to cover cases in which the essence of the invention consists in the mode, process or art of doing a thing or accomplishing a result, and not the particular machinery, apparatus or device employed. A mere abstract principle can not be the subject of a patent, nor is the function or abstract effect of a machine patentable. But the statutory expression covers and protects a comprehensive class of inventions which are combinations of arrangements and processes to work out new and useful results, and which are thus patentable irrespective of the particular forms of the instrumentalities used.

—Inventions included within the term "machine" are obviously those which consist of a particular mechanism or device, or a combination of mechanical devices or parts, as distinguished from a tool or instrument. To sustain a patent for a machine it is only necessary that the combination to produce certain effects be new, whether the separate devices or elements be new or old, provided that the combination is of such a nature that the inventive faculty was exercised in devising it; and, generally speaking, "a machine is rightfully the subject of a patent whenever a new or an old effect is produced by mechanism new in its combinations, arrangements or mode of operation." (Curtis' Law of Patents, 20.)

—The term "manufacture" is construed in the sense in which it is popularly used, to mean the product or fabric of a machine or of human art or industry. To be properly the subject of a patent as a manufacture, the product must itself be essentially new. Thus, an article in common use can not be patented as a new manufacture merely because it is fabricated by the use of new and improved machinery; nor is a product patentable under this head merely because a machine makes it more perfectly than it can be made without
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a machine.

—The term "composition of matter" includes "patent medicines" and all compounds or mixtures of substances, as articles of food, etc. The resultant article or "composition" must, of course, be new, to be the subject of a patent, but the question is not, whether the ingredients or components are new, but whether there is novelty in the combination, and the novelty may consist in combining, in new proportions, ingredients which have already been in extensive and common use for the purpose of producing a similar composition.

—Besides the foregoing classes of the subject matter of patentable inventions, the statute provides for patenting "improvements," and the larger number of patents are issued for improvements. It was early decided that a patent for the improvement of a machine is the same thing as a patent for an improved machine, but of course the patent can only be taken for the new combination. It should be noticed that the patent office does not undertake to determine whether the improvement will infringe an existing patent. But if the improvement is novel, the patent is issued and the question of infringement left to the courts. The test of the validity of a patent for an improvement of an existing machine, is to ascertain whether there has been actual and substantial change, or merely formal alteration requiring no invention. If no substantially new element has been added to the old machine, the patent can not be sustained; but if some really new feature has been introduced into the old mechanism, which causes it to operate differently or produces a new or better effect, then such addition will properly be the subject of a patent as an improvement. Two classes of questions therefore arise in passing upon the validity of a patent for an improvement of a machine. First, where the effects produced are the same, the inquiry is, whether the modus operandi of the improved machine is substantially the same as that of the old machine, or whether the difference in operation is sufficient to sustain a patent; second, where the effects produced by the improved and by the old machine are different, then the nature and quality of the effect will be the criterion of the validity of the patent. It should be added, that there is no distinction between an improvement on a patented machine and on one that is not patented.

—2. Qualities of Patentable Inventions. The essential qualities of a patentable invention are very broadly indicated in the statute. The terms employed in the act are "invented or discovered," "new and useful art, machine," etc., and the question, what constitutes a patentable invention, is therefore to be answered by referring to the adjudications of English and American courts, which constitute the common law of the patent system. It should be noted first, that "invented" and "discovered" are synonymous in the patent law; "novelty" and "utility," required by our statute, have always been held vitally essential qualities of patentable inventions; and the degree of novelty and utility—the "sufficiency of invention"—necessary to support a patent, has been determined by the courts in the numerous cases which have presented these questions for adjudication. The degree of absolute utility required in an invention is, however, slight. It is only necessary that the invention shall not be positively trivial, nor, on the other hand, noxious to public health or morals. The principal inquiry in patent law is therefore into the novelty of the invention, for the whole theory upon which the patent system rests, is that the patentee offers the world something new in consideration for his exclusive patent privilege. The novelty required by the American law is universal novelty, with the one exception that mere prior knowledge or use abroad will not defeat the rights of a native inventor, if the foreign invention has not been patented or described in any printed publication before the date of the American invention. The general principles governing the essential degree of novelty may be briefly summarized as follows: It is established in the early cases that a new use of an old thing—technically called a "double use"—is not patentable. Merely mechanical changes, or colorable variations, requiring no exercise of the inventive faculty; and, in general, alterations in the form or proportions of an existing device, can not be the subject of a patent. And while the invention itself, and not the mental process by which it was devised, is the real test of its patentability, it must still be observed that to support a patent the law requires it to appear that the invention is of such a nature as not to exclude the possibility of exercise of the inventive faculty in devising it. The terms "invented" and "discovered" mean that the subject of a patent must be a true invention or discovery, and not a mere mechanical improvement or substitution of a known "equivalent" involving mechanical skill or superior workmanship. But if the result, if the invention itself, is properly patentable, the law does not regard the mode of invention or discovery; and an accidental discovery or invention is, in the law, just as meritorious as one which is the result of laborious investigation and experiment. To satisfy the statute requirement of novelty, therefore, an invention must be substantially different from anything that has previously existed; and the criterion of the "sufficiency of invention" is the character of the invention itself, and not the degree of ingenuity or skill employed in devising it.

—3. Qualifications of Patentees. The existing law provides for the issue of the patent in every instance to "the original and first inventor." A radical difference between English and American law exists on this point. In England the first importer of an invention is treated as an inventor, and may obtain a patent; but under our system the patent issues only to the inventor. The only discrimination in our law in favor of citizens of the United States, is the provision that mere prior knowledge in a foreign country shall not debar a native inventor from obtaining a patent for an invention devised
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independently here, if at the time of making his application he really believes himself to be the first inventor. The foreign invention must have been patented or described in some printed publication prior to the date of invention in this country in order to deprive the native inventor of his patent.

—4. Designs. Section 4929 of the Revised Statutes provides that "any person who by his own industry, genius, efforts and expense has invented and produced any new and original design for a manufacture, bust, statue, alto-relievo, or bas-relief; any new and original design for the printing of woolen, silk, cotton or other fabrics; any new and original impression, ornament, pattern, print or picture to be printed, painted, cast, or otherwise placed on or worked into any article of manufacture; or any new, useful and original shape or configuration of any article of manufacture, the same not having been known or used by others before his invention or production thereof, or patented or described in any printed publication, may, upon payment of the fees prescribed, and other due proceedings had, the same as in cases of inventions or discoveries, obtain a patent therefor." The term for which these patents are issued is either three and a half, seven or fourteen years, and the fees are, respectively, ten, fifteen and thirty dollars.

—5. Procedure in the Patent Office. Since 1836 the whole business of issuing patents has been conducted by the patent office at Washington. Applications for patents are made to the commissioner of patents in accordance with a prescribed form, which consists of a petition for the allowance of the patent, and an oath that the applicant believes himself to be the first inventor, and that he does not know or believe that the invention was ever before known or used. These forms accompany the specification or description of the invention, which is by far the most important part of the application. The statute provides that the specification shall describe the invention in such "full, clear, concise and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it appertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make, construct, compound and use the same." The object of this provision is to secure to the public the benefit of the invention after the expiration of the patent, which, as we have seen, is part of the compact between the patentee and the state. The specification concludes with the "claims," in which the inventor is required to "particularly point out and distinctly claim the part, improvement or combination which he claims as his invention or discovery." Drawings accompany the specification in all cases which admit of them, and the commissioner may require the applicant to furnish the patent office with a model or specimen, although these are now not often required.

—The application, on being filed in the office, is referred to the examiner or officer in charge of the department in which the invention is classed. The examiner teen proceeds to make an examination of the invention, and of the patent office records, to ascertain whether it possesses novelty and utility. An examination of the records of foreign patent bureaus and of scientific works is also necessary, to ascertain whether the invention has been anticipated abroad, or whether it has been described in any printed publication. If from any of these sources anything is found which shows the invention claimed, or any feature of it, to be wanting in novelty, the applicant is notified by the examiner, and a report is sent him rejecting the application, stating specifically in what features novelty is lacking, and giving references to such prior patents or records as anticipate the invention. The applicant thus has an opportunity to amend his application so as to make it conform to the state of the art, and to eliminate the features that are not new. If the objection raised by the examiner is deemed groundless, the applicant may attempt, by argument or explanation, to remove it. In case of adverse decision, an appeal will lie from the decision of the primary examiner to an intermediate board, consisting of three examiners-in-chief; and if the applicant is still dissatisfied, he can bring his case before the commissioner of patents. If no objection is raised by the primary examiner, or if all objection is removed by amendment or overcome by argument, the application is allowed. The fee upon filing an application is $15; and upon the issue of the patent, $20. The final fee is required to be paid within six months after the allowance of the patent, and the specification is then printed, and the patent issued for the term of seventeen years from the date of its issue.

—6. Reissue and Disclaimer. A further proceeding, of which the patent office has jurisdiction after the issue of the patent, is the "reissue" of patents which are defective on their first issue, "if the error has arisen by inadvertence, accident or mistake." Where the patent is invalid by reason of a defective or insufficient specification, it is surrendered and sent to the patent office with a corrected specification; and in a proper case, on payment of the duty, a new or reissued patent, in accordance with the amended specification, is granted for the unexpired term of the original patent. These reissues were formerly issued with great laxity. But since the decision of the supreme court in Miller vs. Brass Co., 104 U S., 350, the provisions of the statute have been observed, and the practice of repeatedly expanding patents by reissuing them is no longer possible. It should be added, that in cases where the inventor has inadvertently claimed in his original patent more than he is entitled to, the patent may be amended by filing a "disclaimer" of what is excessive, and the patent will then be valid for the residue.

—7. Interferences. Where an application is filed which "interferes" with a pending application, or with a patent granted within two years previous to the filing of the application, an "interference" is declared. The parties to the interference are then required to file statements giving
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briefly the dates of conception of the invention and of its completion, and the question of priority of invention is then tried by a somewhat cumbersome procedure. Evidence substantiating the allegations of the preliminary statement is taken on behalf of the respective parties, and the matter is then brought on for a hearing before the examiner of interferences. The patent is awarded to the party who successfully establishes priority of invention, and at the same time shows reasonable diligence in reducing the invention to practice.

—8. Careats. Protection is afforded to inventors who have not completed or perfected their inventions, by the practice of filing caveats in the patent office. The caveat is an instrument which recites that the inventor has conceived, but not yet perfected, his invention, and which sets forth in general terms the salient points and characteristics of the invention as far as completed. The caveator then prays protection until he shall have matured the invention. This instrument is filed in the secret archives of the patent office, and protects the caveator for a year, by entitling him to notice in case, within that time, any application is filed in the office which would interfere with the invention indicated in the caveat. In case such notice is given, he has three months' time in which to prepare and file a complete application for a patent. The caveat may be renewed for a year at a time, with the same effect.

—9. Assignments and Licenses. The transfer of a patent, or interest in a patent, is by assignment. The transfer may be either an assignment, 1, of the whole patent, 2, of an undivided interest in the patent, or 3, of an exclusive interest in the patent within any specified territory of the United States. The Revised Statutes require the assignment to be in writing, and provide that it "shall be void as against any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee for a valuable consideration without notice unless it is recorded in the patent office within three months from the date thereof." A license is a contract which confers upon the licensee the mere right to use or practice the invention, and is distinguished from an assignment in that it conveys no interest in the patent itself. This contract is not required to be recorded, nor need it be in writing, but may be oral or implied. Part owners of a patent are tenants in common, and are not bound to account to each other for receipts from licenses, and these latter may be granted by any of the co-owners without joining the others. An application for a patent pending in the patent office may be assigned in the same manner as a patent; and the patent will issue to the assignee. So also an agreement to assign a patent for an invention when issued will be effective, and specific performance of it will be enforced in equity. It has recently been held, however, that an assignment of an application, or an agreement to assign a patent for an invention when issued, must describe the application or invention with sufficient distinctness to enable the court to identify it.

—10. Patent Office Fees. The patent office fees, other than those already given, are as follows: On filing every caveat, $10; on filing a disclaimer, $10; on filing every application for a reissue, $30; on filing every application for a division of a reissue, $30; on filing every application for an extension, $30; on the grant of every extension, $50; on filing an appeal from a primary examiner to the examiners-in-chief, $10; on filing an appeal to the commissioner from the examiners-in-chief, $20; for certified copies of patents or other instruments, except copies of printed patents sold by the office, for every 100 words, 10 cents; for certified copies of printed patents sold by the office, 10 cents for every 100 words, less the price actually paid for such copies without certification; for certified copies of drawings, the reasonable cost of making them; for recording an assignment of 300 words or less, $1; for recording an assignment of more than 300 and not more than 1,000 words, $2; for recording every assignment of more than 1,000 words, $3; for uncertified copies of the specifications and accompanying drawings of all patents which are in print, single copies 25 cents, and for twenty copies or more, whether of one or several patents, per copy, 10 cents; for uncertified copies of the specifications and drawings of patents not in print, the reasonable cost of making the same; for copies of matter in any foreign language, per 100 words, 20 cents; for translations, per 100 words, 50 cents; for assistance to attorneys in examination of records, one hour or less, 50 cents; each additional hour, 50 cents; for assistance to attorneys in examination of patents and other works in the scientific library, one hour or less, $1, and for each additional hour, $1.

—11. Procedure in the Courts. By the Revised Statutes the United States circuit courts have original jurisdiction "of all actions, suits, controversies and cases arising under the patent laws of the United States." All proceedings, therefore, for the protection or enforcement of patent rights, except actions for the breach of contract relating to patents, which are cognizable in the state courts, are brought in the circuit courts or in a district court having circuit court jurisdiction. Under the act of 1870 the remedy of the patentee, where his patent is infringed, is either by action at law, in which the actual damage suffered from the infringement will be recovered, or by suit in equity, in which the complainant may obtain a perpetual injunction restraining further infringement if he establishes his case, and also recover the damages sustained from the infringement, as well as the profits realized by the defendant from the use of the infringement. Where the complainant, at the commencement of the suit, is able to present a strong prima facie case, he may also, upon notice, obtain a preliminary injunction restraining infringement pendente lite. The equitable remedy is usually adopted as being the most efficacious; but some of the archaic common law procedure is retained in the circuit courts, and the suits are as protracted and slow
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as the old English chancery litigation. Suits for infringement are brought in the name of the owners of the patent right for the district where the infringement is committed. The evidence is taken on behalf of the respective parties, supporting the allegations of the bill and answer in respect to the naked question of infringement, or the validity of the complainant's patent, where that is in issue. The cause is then brought on for a hearing before a single judge, who passes upon the issues raised by the pleadings. If his decision sustains the complainant's patent, and holds that it has been infringed by the defendant, an interlocutory decree is entered to that effect, and the cause is sent before a master to take an account of the defendant's profits from the use of the infringement. Upon the master's report the cause is again brought before the circuit judge, and the final decree settled, determining the amount that the complainant is entitled to recover. If the court decides adversely to the complainant, a decree is entered dismissing the bill. From the judgments and final decrees of the circuit court in these causes, a writ of error or appeal will lie to the supreme court of the United States.

—12. Infringements. The question, what constitutes infringement, is one of the most difficult questions presented to a court for adjudication; and the legal principles which govern its determination can only be roughly indicated in this article. A patent confers upon the patentee the exclusive right of making, using, and vending to others to be used, the invention protected by patent. The patent is infringed, therefore, whenever the invention so protected is appropriated in either of those ways without the license of the patentee, or whenever a colorable imitation of it, not involving new invention, is so employed. A patent for a machine is infringed whenever the same means or devices are employed, substantially as in the patented machine, to produce the same result; and it has been held, per Taney, C. J., in Browne vs. Duchesne (19 How., 183), that the mere making of a patented machine is an infringement.

—It is evident that a patent for an art is infringed when that art is used or practiced by another without license of the patentee, and that it is an infringement of a patent for a manufacture, or composition of matter, to either make, use or sell the article claimed in the patent. But the whole difficulty in questions of infringement consists in determining "what degree of resemblance constitutes the identity which the patent law designates as an infringement, and what kind and what degree of difference will relieve from this charge." It is well settled that the substitution of known "equivalents" for the means described in the patent is not sufficient variation to avoid infringement; and "by equivalents in machinery is usually meant the substitution of merely one mechanical power for another, or one obvious and customary mode for another, of effecting a like result." (Smith vs Downing, 1 Fish Pat. Cases, 87.) But the difficulty of applying these principles presents itself anew in every case, and it can best be solved by referring to the great mass of precedents in English and American law. It will be sufficient, therefore, to add, that substantial identity is the test of infringement, and that substantial identity exists wherever the difference between the patented invention and the alleged infringement is mere colorable alteration, and does not involve invention. In the words of Nelson, J., in Blanchard vs. Beers (2 Blatch., 418), "There must be mind and inventive genius involved in it (the alteration), and not the mere skill of the workman." But it should be observed, finally, that even if the variation involve sufficient invention to entitle its deviser to a patent, it will not necessarily relieve him from infringement if he still employs substantially the device covered by a prior patent.

—13. Defenses. In addition to joining issue on the question of infringement, the statute provides that the defendant may plead the general issue; and, upon notice, may prove on the trial the following matters: first, fraudulently defective or excessive specification of complainant's patent; second, that complainant's patent was surreptitiously obtained; third, earlier patent or publication of the invention claimed; fourth, that the patentee was not the first inventor of any substantial feature claimed; fifth, abandonment or public use two years prior to the patentee's application. In an action at law, the dates and circumstances must be appended to the notice; and in an equity suit, any of the above matters may be pleaded, and like notice may be given in the answer. The defendant is thus enabled to call in question the validity of the complainant's patent; and if he succeeds in impeaching it, the question of infringement is at an end.

—III. THE GENERAL POLICY OF A PATENT SYSTEM. Associated in their origin with the oppressions of the Tudors and the Stuarts, patents for inventions have since that time not infrequently been denounced as monopolies. In the earlier cases in which patents were brought before English tribunals for adjudication, the judges were reluctant to recognize the rights of patentees. Lord Kenyon is reported to have said, in the great case of Hornblower vs. Boulton (8 T. R., 99), "I confess I am not one of those who greatly favor patents," and Lord Erskine stated that "the ideas of the learned judges had been very different as to the advantages to the public since the statute giving those monopolies." Nor has the criticism of the patent system been confined to expressions of judicial disfavor of a century ago. It is still asserted by a certain school of economists that a patent is a true monopoly which robs the public, and that all systems of patent law are radically and essentially vicious. Within the last fifty years the system has been repeatedly assailed in the English parliament, and in this country the question of its abolition has been broached at Washington. In 1829, in 1851, in 1863, and again in 1871, the policy of the British system was inquired
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into by committees from the upper and lower houses of parliament in consequence of the violent attacks made upon the patent laws. At almost every session of the house of commons for the past few years, a bill has been introduced having for its object the unconditional abolition of the present patent system; and the supporters of this measure, led by Sir Roundell Palmer, constituted a faction known as "Abolitionists." Recently the farmers of some of our western states, in consequence of the extortions of the owners of certain important patents, notably the "wire fence" and "driven well" patents, have demanded the repeal of the American patent laws. M. Chevalier, the French economist, writing in 1878, denounced in toto all systems of patent law. In 1868, as secretary of the confederation, Bismarck recommended to the North German parliament the abolition of patents, and in Holland a law was enacted in 1869, discontinuing the system in that country from and after Jan. 1, 1870. From this résumé of the opposition to patents it will be seen that the question of the policy of patent laws is by no means settled. A discussion of that question involves an examination of the economic and legal principles upon which the system rests.

—The motive which originally inserted in the statute of monopolies the proviso from which later systems of patent law have been derived and developed, was, as its recital shows, to stimulate and encourage inventive genius in England, and thereby foster and develop the young industries of that country. There has since arisen the theory that an inventor has a property, or at least a quasi property, in his ideas, which it is both just and expedient to protect by patent laws. The claims of the patent system are thus rested upon the two-fold consideration of, first, a sense of justice to the inventor, and, second, a belief in the sound policy of stimulating inventive genius by holding out to an inventor a material recompense proportionate to his contribution to society.

—The soundness of these propositions is controverted by opponents of patent laws. It is urged that there is no right of property in the ideas of inventors which society is bound to recognize, and also that the evils and inconveniences of the patent system are not compensated for by its benefits. The first of these propositions is obviously theoretical. The assertion that there is a right of property in inventions is controverted by the assertion that there can be no property in thought, which is of the essence of all inventions, because it has not the attributes and qualities of material property. The former position is vigorously supported by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, while the latter is maintained by M. Chevalier and the British "abolitionists." Without pausing to decide this economic controversy, it may be remembered, first, that inventions are the product of most valuable and indirectly wealth-producing labor, and second, that the state can, as observed by Lord Brougham in Jefferys vs. Boosey, make inventions "a quasi property, or give the author the same kind of right and the same remedies which he would have if the produce of his labor could have been regarded as property." In this practical aspect of the question the theoretical inquiry becomes unimportant, since the legislature can and does endow inventors' rights with all the attributes of other property, just as it sometimes invests with such attributes its own franchises; and it is important to be added, this practice seems to be ethically justifiable. The whole question, therefore, resolves itself into one of expediency and policy.

—The most considerable objection urged against the policy of granting patents for inventions is, that they interfere with the principle of "freedom of industry" (la liberté du travail). This is the argument of M. Chevalier and the "abolitionists." It is by no means clear, however, as may be gathered from the following considerations, that the practical effect of patent laws is to interfere with freedom of industry in any degree whatever.

—Under a well administered code of patent laws it is obvious that nothing can be claimed and protected in a valid patent which is not new, which is not a true invention. The industrial world is not, therefore, deprived by patent of what it previously enjoyed, for by the hypothesis the invention is the discovery of some hitherto unknown agency or appliance. The fallacy of the assertion that freedom of industry is interfered with by patents lies in the assumption either that old devices are allowed to be covered by patent, or that new inventions would come into being in the absence of patent laws. But the first half of this assumption is negatived by the hypothesis that the invention is new, i.e., hitherto unknown. Passing, then, to the consideration of the proposition that new inventions protected by patent would be made without the stimulus of patent laws, we find that it is no less fallacious. A necessity, say the abolitionists, is itself a sufficient incentive to excite invention, and as soon as a want is felt, a hundred minds will be devoted to devising a means of filling it. But the history of industrial communities does not bear out this assertion. Not only is there a tendency among the classes actually engaged in manufacturing and agricultural pursuits to remain apathetically content in the use of already existing appliances, but there has even been evinced, and notably in England, a positive hostility on the part of operatives to the introduction of new, and especially of labor-saving inventions. A hundred years ago mobs destroyed the improved machinery of Arkwright and Hargreaves. Thirty years later, occurred the Luddite riots in consequence of the introduction of power looms. Competition will, of course, in time develop improvements; but the antagonism now existing between capital which most feels the spur of competition, and labor which possesses the skill to create the improvements, renders this agency ineffective to produce the best results. So long as the capitalist is to reap the entire benefit of an improvement,
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the inventor will be slow to devise it. There must be some way of appealing directly to inventive genius to obtain its best fruits. This was realized by Edward Bally, one of the Swiss commissioners to the Philadelphia centennial exposition. On his return to Switzerland, which has no patent system, he wrote: "We must introduce the patent system. All our production is more or less a simple copy. The inventor has no profit to expect from his invention, however useful it may be. It is evident that this absolute want of protection will never awaken in a people the spirit of invention * *." And yet the Swiss are reputed as ingenious as any other people.

—Still another consideration may be adduced to refute the claims of the "abolitionists," that freedom of industry is interfered with by patents. If the inventor keeps his invention in secrecy and allows his secret to die with him—which was the only protection an inventor had before patent laws became effective—it can not be said that the normal movement of industries is interfered with. In this case, however, he entirely deprives the world of the benefit of his discovery. But by taking out a patent he simply makes a contract with society, whereby his secret is surrendered in return for a certain fraction of the benefit conferred by it for a term of years. If the invention is valuable, the inventor's reward is proportionately rich; if it is of no importance, it can have no effect on industries. An inventor's patent excludes the industrial world from nothing it enjoyed before; it simply offers a novelty as a substitute for older methods. Undoubtedly, the system, because imperfectly administered, has had the effect, in many instances, of depriving the world by patent of old and well-known appliances; and then, as in England and France, the burden is thrown on the community of proving that the patent is robbing it of what it previously enjoyed. But obviously the cause of this is the imperfect administration of an imperfect code of laws. A patent for a true invention can never clog the wheels of an industry, since, if it be a true invention, it leaves the industry free to enjoy all the agencies and appliances known before the new invention was devised. If, however, this latter cheapens or improves an existing process, the inventor asks to share in the enhanced cheapness or improvement, which by the hypothesis his genius is the means of creating.

—Similar views have been expressed by so keen an observer as Mr. Herbert Spencer. "They fall into a serious error," he wrote in his "Social Statics," "who suppose that the exclusive right assumed by a discoverer is something taken from the public. He who in any way increases the powers of production, is seen by all, save a few insane Luddites, to be a general benefactor who gives rather than takes. The successful inventor makes a further conquest over nature. By him the laws of matter are rendered still more subservient to the wants of mankind. He economizes labor; helps to emancipate men from their slavery to the needs of the body; harnesses a new power to the car of human happiness. He can not, if he would, prevent society from largely participating in his good fortune. Before he can realize any benefit from his new process or apparatus, he must first confer a benefit on his fellow-men; must either offer them a better article at the price usually charged, or the same article at a less price. If he fails to do this, his invention is a dead letter; if he does it, he makes society a partner in the new mine of wealth he has opened. For all the exertion he has had in subjugating a previously unknown region of nature, he simply asks an extra proportion of the fruits. The rest of mankind unavoidably come in for the main advantage; will in a short time have the whole. Meanwhile, they can not without injustice disregard his claims."

—But the cause of patent laws does not require to be established in a negative, defensive manner. In the United States, at least, the beneficence of the system is so obvious, the claims of inventors are so meritorious, that argument is hardly necessary to make them apparent.

—Patents give support to a class of ingenious and talented men whose profession it is to devise improvements and make discoveries, and whose life and training render them especially qualified for such service. It is estimated that there are from five to six thousand professional inventors in the United States. But it is obvious that without a patent code it would hardly be possible to follow invention as a business. Experts might find employment with great manufacturers, but they could not feel the same personal incentive to make inventions which the patent system affords them. So that the first effect of patent laws is to keep these thousands of minds constantly engaged in solving the problems of science and mechanics.

—Patents, moreover, facilitate the introduction of inventions. They enable the inventor to give the capitalist something substantial upon which to embark his money; without which there would not be the same inducement to him to engage in the enterprise of introducing novelties if the results of his experiments and ventures could be at once appropriated by others.

—Patents give also to the inventor a reward proportioned to the value of the invention. The incentive is thus given to devise labor-saving and cheapening inventions. An inventor realizes that however ingenious his device, it can have no existence commercially unless it either cheapens or improves something for which there is a demand, or unless the invention itself creates and satisfies a new want. Bessemer's invention reduced the cost of cast steel from $200 per ton to about $55; and with all this reduction the royalty was only $10 per ton, or about 7 per cent. of the reduction. It has been estimated that inventions increase the value of human labor in this country 2 per cent, annually.

—These benefits will perhaps be still more obvious and impressive if we consider the practical effect of patent laws through inventions upon the industrial system of a community. The real beginning
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of the patent system was, as we have seen, coeval with the great scientific and inventive movement in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It is not claimed that patent laws originated this movement, but that they at least made it possible and accelerated it. A review of the history of the iron and cotton industries in Great Britain shows this clearly. In the year 1740 the total produce of iron in Great Britain was 17,350 tons. In that year Dudley's invention for using coal in smelting in lieu of timber began to be used, and in less than 50 years (1788) the annual production had increased to 68,300 tons. In 1788 Watt's steam engine was introduced for blowing furnaces, and for the year 1806, the production amounted to 258,206 tons. In 1830 Neilson's hot blast was adopted, and by 1839 the yearly produce of iron had reached 1,248,781 tons, and the annual production now averages more than 6,000,000 tons, of a value of more than £16,000,000. In less than a century and a half the production of iron has increased nearly a thousand fold, and it is the inventions of Dudley, Watt and Neilson which have at least made this increase possible.

—Quite as remarkable has been the effect of inventions upon the English cotton industry. At the middle of the eighteenth century the total annual imports of raw cotton into Great Britain were less than 3,000,000 pounds. In 1769 and 1770 were patented Arkwright's and Hargreaves' inventions for spinning, and by 1776 the annual imports of cotton wool amounted to nearly 7,000,000 pounds. In 1779 Crompton's spinning mule was invented, and in 1785 and 1787 Cartwright's loom patents were issued; by 1790 the yearly imports of cotton had reached 31,447,605 pounds. In 1880 the imports of cotton amounted to 1,628,664,576 pounds, and the British cotton factories now employ nearly half a million operatives. The amount of cotton manufactured in Great Britain has thus increased more than five hundred fold, and an industry has been created which gives employment to about one-seventieth of the total population.

—The growth of the iron and cotton industries may be regarded as typical of the general industrial progress of Great Britain during the last hundred years. More recent general advance is shown by the fact that the total exports of British produce have increased from £52,000,000 in 1848, to £223,060,446 in 1880; and in the same period the population has increased about 25 per cent.: from about 27,500,000 in 1850, to 34,505,000 in 1880. A comparison of the ratio of production to population at the former period with the similar ratio at the later one, will indicate the degree of increase in productive capacity. It is, therefore, confidently asserted that the most important agency in increasing the productive power of a nation is the invention and introduction of labor-saving devices, and that the invention of such devices alone renders such an increase possible, as is shown in a consideration of the above statistics of the iron and cotton industries.

—The history of these inventions, however, indicates that without the protection of patent laws they would not have been developed and introduced. In the case of the steam engine, for example, it was only after spending all his own means, after thirteen years of ceaseless experiment, and after obtaining from parliament the grant of a special patent for twenty-four years, that Watt succeeded in inducing Matthew Bolton to embark his capital in the development and introduction of the invention. It is estimated that £40,000 were expended by Watt and Bolton in developing this invention; and such was the hostility shown to its introduction that the patent had nearly expired before these men began to receive a return for their expenditure of time and money. A recent life of Watt states that the steam power of Great Britain is now equivalent to the power of 400,000,000 men—more than ten times the entire population and it is primarily Watt's invention and the countless devices of subsequent inventors which utilize the magnificent power he discovered, that have made England's industrial and commercial progress possible.

—The history of the steam engine is the history of nearly all great labor-saving discoveries. They have all originated in patent protected communities; and where the patent laws have not directly incited the inventor to make his discovery, they have still facilitated its introduction and development by enabling the inventor to enlist the aid of capital. The manner in which inventors are affected by patent laws is instructively shown by the following evidence of Sir Henry Bessemer before the committee of the house of commons in 1871: "My experience during the whole of this time (the years that he was experimenting) has shown me clearly that if I had had no patent law to fall back upon, I, as an engineer, could never have first spent two and a half years of my time and £4,000 in mere experiments, which if they had failed would have been an entire loss to me. Altogether I made an outlay of about £20,000, but of course I had a large stake to play for. I knew that steel was selling at £50 to £60 per ton, and I knew that if it could be made by my plan, it could with profit be sold at £20 per ton. But had it not been for the law, securing my right in my invention by a patent, I could never have hoped as a simple manufacturer to have recouped myself." Such has been the effect of the British patent system in two conspicuous instances, and such instances might be almost indefinitely multiplied.

—Turning now to the industrial history of the United States, the results are no less impressive. Perhaps no one industry has been more closely identified with the national life and growth of the country than cotton raising. It is stated in Smithers' History of Liverpool (p. 124), that in 1784 an American vessel arrived at Liverpool, having on board eight bags of cotton, which were seized by the custom house officers under an impression that cotton was not the produce of the United States. In 1798 Eli Whitney, of Westborough, Mass., invented and patented his saw gin for separating cotton from the seeds. Before this invention cotton could be
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cleansed only by hand, or with some rude hand mill. The utmost daily capacity of one of these mills was about sixty-five pounds, and by hand a man could prepare from one to four pounds per diem. With Whitney's cotton gin a single person could prepare in a day about 300 pounds—five times as much as by any prior method; and the daily capacity of modern gins is said to be about 4,000 pounds. The effect of this invention upon cotton raising was marvelous. In 1792 the exports of raw cotton from the United States were 138,328 pounds. By 1794, the year after the introduction of the cotton gin, the exports had increased to 1,601,700 pounds; in 1800 they had reached 17,789,803 pounds—more than one hundred fold in eight years; in 1820 they amounted to 127,860,152 pounds, of a value of $20,000,000, showing an increase in twenty-seven years of nearly a thousand fold.

—The story of Whitney's invention and of his almost unsuccessful efforts to obtain recognition of his rights as an inventor, is matter of history. The unscrupulous infringement of his patent brought discredit upon his contemporaries. But the record of the life of this man shows that he labored upon his invention in the hope of obtaining under a patent a share of the wealth it was to create; and had it not been for this hope, rendered possible by our patent laws, he could not have devoted his time and energies to the successful achievement of his great work.

—So the effect of our patent laws upon the general agricultural methods of this country is something almost incalculable. Nearly all the inventions which have made western farming possible on its present magnificent scale have originated and been perfected under our patent system; and the history of the development of our agriculture might almost be written from the patent office records of the annual achievements of American inventive genius. A single instance will call to mind the manner in which agriculture has been revolutionized by American inventions.

—Down to the beginning of the present century, the only great improvement that had been made upon the harvesting methods of the ancients was the invention of the cradle in 1794, by a Scotchman. In 1834 the first patent was issued in this country upon the McCormick reaper. It took McCormick about twenty years after 1834 to develop and perfect his machine, and it was between 1835 and 1858 that it was practically introduced. Their effect can be estimated by comparing in the following table (from the census of 1870), the agricultural population of the country with the amount of produce in which these machines are used, at the different periods before and after their introduction:

Allowance must, of course, be made for the innumerable other inventions employed in the culture of these products; but the general increase of per capita production can be roughly estimated from these figures; and while the farming population increased about 100 per cent. between 1850 and 1870, the produce of grain increased nearly 200 per cent.

—But the inventions to which this increase is due, could not have been devised or perfected without the stimulus and protection of our patent laws. More than 5,000 patents have been issued in this country upon reapers and mowers alone, and the latest machines embody the results of the life work of a hundred inventors whose only hope of recouping themselves for their expenditure of time and fortune was in our patent system, and who could not have labored without it. It is stated that the McCormick company alone has spent more than $1,000,000 in experiments, and it is also stated that this machine saves the country annually the sum of $10,000,000.

—Similar effects are to be noticed in our textile industries. In 1860 the number of hands engaged in woolen, cotton and other similar factories, was 181,550; the wages paid amounted to $37,301,710; and the value of the product was $196,416,400. In 1870 the number of operatives had increased to 233,328, about 40 per cent. The wages amounted to $79,401,367, more than 100 per cent. increase, and the product was valued at $395,158,565, more than 100 per cent. advance.

—It will be found in nearly every instance that the chief agency in effecting this increased production is the labor-economizing machinery devised by countless inventors, and patented among the myriad American patents. One more table will indicate the rate of increase in our general manufactures:

—But enough has been written to indicate the practical tendency of patent laws; and it may, perhaps, be safe to conclude that the opposition to patents, although directed at the system and demanding its abolition, has in fact been occasioned by the imperfect administration of still more imperfect patent codes. Especially is this true of the British abolitionists. The enormous expense of patent litigation in England, its "glorious uncertainty," and the practice of throwing on the public the burden of impeaching the patent without first officially investigating its validity, have opened the way in that country for great abuses, and have undoubtedly made the system unnecessarily burdensome to British manufacturers. In many instances under the English law, the manufacturer finds it cheaper to acquiesce in the claims of an impostor than to contest the validity of his patent in court. The remedy for these evils, however, and for the evils of the American system, is
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in reform of the law and its administration, not abolition of the system; and the fact that enormous benefits can still be traced to these patent laws, however imperfectly administered, furnishes a cogent reason for continuing and extending the benefits by continuing and improving the laws.

—IV. CHANGES IN THE LAW. The American patent system is regarded, both here and abroad, as the most progressive and complete existent institution of its kind. Many of the reforms and improvements in patent laws have originated at Washington, and have then been adopted by European governments. The most radical improvement in the system was made in 1836, when the patent office was established, and the practice of making preliminary examinations of inventions instituted. This latter feature is recommended by all economists familiar with the working of patent laws, as a desideratum of every system, and has been incorporated into the law of several other countries. Since 1836 there have been made minor changes and extensions of the American law, which have preserved and developed the general symmetry of the system; but with this development there have appeared certain defects and abuses which call for still further reform of the system, the character of which can here be only briefly indicated.

—The most impressive feature of the American system is its extraordinary magnitude. There have now (1883) been issued in this country since 1790, about 285,000 patents. During the year 1882 there were acted upon in the patent office 31,522 applications relating to patents, and in the same time 18,267 patents were issued or reissued. In that year only 6,099 patents expired; so that it appears that the number of patents is now increasing at the rate of 12,000 a year, and the records of the patent office are becoming enormously complicated. Patented inventions are there classified in 167 classes and more than 3,000 sub-classes. To preserve the system in its integrity, it is obviously necessary, first, that a patent should issue only for a new invention, and secondly, that it should be clear in its claims of all prior patents. A thorough preliminary examination of an application for a patent involves a search not only through our patent office records, but also through the records of the various foreign patent bureaus. A still more difficult task is to adjust the claims of a new application so as not to conflict with innumerable prior patents. It is vitally important both to the applicant and to the public that this investigation should be thorough and complete. This is every day becoming more difficult; and it is stated that not a week passes without the allowance of one or more patents at Washington for old inventions. Nor is this strange when we consider the number and complexity of the records to be searched, and the number of patents annually taken out upon certain subjects of invention. During the year 1882, ninety-nine patents were issued at Washington for cultivators and cultivator appliances alone. To remedy the acknowledged defects in the administration of our present system, several reforms have been suggested, the merits of which are obvious. These are: first, the requirement of a higher standard of invention to sustain a patent, rejecting the host of applications for merely obvious and mechanical improvements now indiscriminately allowed, which would relieve the records of the patent office and at the same time secure to the community and the inventor the benefits of all true inventions; second, the establishment of periodical fees as in the European countries, for the non-payment of which the patent should become void. This again would relieve the records by weeding out unsuccessful inventions from the patented list, and at the same time would work no hardship on the inventor, who, of course, derives no benefit from a patented failure.

—Another defect in our patent system is the procedure in the patent office through which the question of priority of invention between two or more applications for the same invention is determined. Without the constitution and without the judicial training and experience of a court of law, the examiners of interferences are called upon to decide, after a quasi trial, the most difficult questions of fact, in connection with which difficult questions of evidence often arise. And after the question has been litigated and settled in the patent office, it is not regarded as res adjudicata, but may have to be tried anew when the question of priority is afterward raised in court. The hardship of this can be realized when it is stated that these interference proceedings often take one, two or even three years before a final decision is reached, and involve the same outlay of money as do similarly protracted legal proceedings. But after all this, the successful party has not an adjudicated patent right, but an ordinary patent, which may be called in question in court. The successful litigant, as the outcome of his long litigation, has merely won a presumption. Moreover, there is no provision under the present system for mulcting the unsuccessful party in the costs of the proceeding; and the way is thus thrown open to any unscrupulous practitioner to debar and hinder an inventor, from obtaining his patent, by merely filing a conflicting application, with an oath that he is the inventor, and thus, without exposing himself to any liability beyond prosecution for perjury, he may involve the inventor in long and expensive litigation. So also there is no provision for the application of the doctrine of estoppel. The most obvious remedy for this defect is either to allow the rival inventors to litigate the question in court in the first instance, and issue the patent to the prevailing party; or else to restrict the function of the patent office to the investigation of the question of novelty, to issue the patent to the first applicant, and grant to subsequent applicants certificates of invention which would enable them, if they chose, to call in question in court the rights of the patentee. Unquestionably, however, inventors should be relieved from the possibility of being obliged
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to litigate the same questions twice, as is the case under the present practice.

—The decision of the supreme court in Miller vs. Brass Company (104 U. S., 350), and the later decisions following this case, have had the effect of reforming a great abuse which existed in the practice of indiscriminately reissuing patents. The statute made provision for reissue where the original patent was defective through inadvertence or mistake of the inventor; but in the patent office the practice had grown up of expanding patents by reissue so as to include more than the inventors originally claimed or invented. This practice was denounced as vicious in the above cited case, and is now no longer possible.

—A change in the statute law, which has been suggested to congress by commissioners for several years past, is the repeal of the provision which limits the term of a patent, where the invention has first been patented in a foreign country, to the life of the foreign patent having the shortest term to run. The motive which inserted this clause in our patent code was, to secure the patenting of important inventions in this country first, and perhaps also to obviate the supposed difficulty of continuing the American patent after the foreign one had expired, and thereby placing domestic industries at a disadvantage in the competition with foreign trade. In fact, however, this provision operates harshly upon the native inventor, who, if he first takes out his American patent, loses his right to patents in several European countries. The advantages of this law are by no means sufficient to compensate for the inconvenience it causes, and the provision should certainly be expunged from the statute book.

—It has also been suggested, that in certain cases there should be established some means of compelling patentees to grant licenses, as has just been done in England by the bill which received the royal assent in August, 1883; but the policy of this measure is at least doubtful. A more politic change would be the insertion in our patent code of a statute of limitations covering claims for infringement. Infringement is in the nature of a tort, and the claim should, therefore, after the analogy of other torts, be barred after a short term of years.

—Other and more radical reforms that have been suggested are, the creation of special tribunals to adjudicate the questions of patent law, whose judges should possess the necessary technical and scientific, as well as legal, attainments; and also the establishment of some means of securing to the court the opinions of absolutely unbiased experts upon the problems of science and mechanics which arise in the trial of patent causes. The present use—or, more properly, abuse—of expert testimony in patent litigation, is hopelessly confusing to the court, and renders its decisions uncertain and unreliable, as the conclusions of the court are often based upon the premises established by expert evidence. There should be some way, therefore, of enabling the court to call in the assistance of eminent scientists whose opinions would be uncolored by retainers from either of the litigants.

—Finally, it should be mentioned that, upon several occasions, the adoption of an international patent code has been recommended, especially by the patent congress at Vienna in 1873. There are at present no indications that such a universal system will be established, but it may yet be safe to conclude that this will be the final step in the development of the patent system, and that the time is perhaps not very remote when that step will be taken.

—V. FOREIGN PATENT LAWS. Taking its origin in England, the patent system has now been extended into more than forty states, provinces and principalities. Switzerland and Holland are the only considerable civilized powers at present without a system of patent laws, and in both countries strenuous efforts are being made to have a patent code enacted. Roughly speaking, the foreign patent systems, with one or two exceptions, differ from the American in not requiring an exhaustive preliminary examination of the invention as to novelty and utility before issuing the patent. Other differences may be observed from the following summary of patent laws.

—Great Britain. Patents are issued for the term of fourteen years from the date of the application, subject, however, to the payment of a tax of £50 at the end of the third year, and £100 at the end of the seventh year. The statute of monopolies provided for the patenting of "new manufactures," but by judicial construction this term had been made to cover the four classes of inventions enumerated in the American act, and the act of 1852 substituted the term "inventions." The patent is issued either to the first inventor or to the "first importer," who is generally the agent of the foreign inventor. The usual procedure in taking out a patent is first to obtain "provisional protection" for six months, after obtaining which "notice to proceed" is given and advertised in the "Commissioners of Patents Journal," with a notification that opposition to the application must be made within twenty-one days from the date of the notice. Three weeks before the expiration of the "provisional protection," application for the law officers' warrant and great seal is made. The final specification is then lodged, and the patent issues for fourteen years from the date of the application. To sustain a patent it is only necessary that the invention should be new within the United Kingdom; and an invention patented elsewhere can be patented in Great Britain at any time during the life of the foreign patent unless a specification or complete description of it exists in the kingdom before the British application is made. The validity of a patent is, however, generally left to be adjudicated by the courts; and it is practically the mere grant of a right to sue for infringement so long as the validity of the patent is unimpeached. Important changes in this law, which were made by parliament during the present year (1883), and are to go into effect Jan. 1, 1884, may be summarized as follows: the cost of patents has been greatly reduced; power
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has been given the board of trade to grant compulsory licenses in certain cases; and the provision that the British patent lapsed with the expiry of any foreign patent of anterior date has not been re-enacted.

—Canada has a patent system resembling that of the United States, and the various Australian colonies and provinces have systems differing somewhat in detail, but substantially like the English in outline and theory.

—France. Patents are issued upon substantially the same classes of inventions as in England and the United States, and extend for a term of fifteen years, subject to an annual tax of 100 francs. No preliminary examination of the invention is made, and the applicant is considered to be the first inventor until the contrary is proved. The question of the validity of the patent is thus entirely left to the courts, and in all patent litigation the burden of proof rests upon those who would oppose or impeach the patent. The novelty required is novelty over the entire world, and an invention must therefore be patented in France, at least as early as in any other country, as otherwise the foreign publication of the specification before the issue of the French patent, would invalidate the latter. The specification must give as full a description as is required by the American law, and the invention must be worked in France within two years of the date of the patent, to preserve its validity.

—Germany. The present patent system dates from July, 1877. Patents are granted for the term of fifteen years upon all new inventions, with some exceptions, such as foods and medicines, and are subject to an annual tax, which increases fifty marks each year of the life of the patent. The patent is issued to the first applicant, except where the application is shown to be made fraudulently. The patent office is situated at Berlin, and an examination of the inventions submitted is made by examiners somewhat as in the United States. Before issuing the patent the specification is published, and opportunity given, for eight weeks, to oppose the grant of the patent on various grounds, as fraud or want of novelty. At the end of that time, if there is no opposition, the patent is granted. As in France, the invention must be worked within the limits of the empire within three years from the grant of the patent, to preserve its validity; and in certain cases the owners of patents are required to grant licenses at reasonable royalties. Willful infringement is, under some circumstances, a crime, punishable by fine, and all infringement may be restrained by civil proceedings.

—Belgium. All applications for patents are granted without examination as to novelty, if they conform to the prescribed form, and all new inventions, except medical appliances and medicines, can be protected by patent. Patents are of three classes: of invention, of addition, and of importation. A patent of invention issues for the term of twenty years, subject to a tax, which increases ten francs each year of the life of the patent. The patent is void if the invention is not new within Belgium, or if any description has been published or foreign patent taken out upon it before the date of the Belgian application. A patent of addition is taken for an improvement of an invention already patented, and expires with the original patent. A patent of importation issues for the unexpired term of any foreign patent, if the invention has not been commercially worked within Belgium for more than a year prior to the application. The specification must be full and exact, as in the United States, and the remedies for infringement are substantially the same as in other countries.

—Italy. Patents are granted for the term of fifteen years, or for a shorter term, upon all new inventions except medicines. A peculiarity of the Italian law is the provision that if the invention be patented elsewhere, the Italian patent continues with the foreign patent of the longest term, if within fifteen years. The invention is required to be worked in Italy within two years, and the patent is subject to annual taxes.

—Russia. Patents are granted for a maximum term of ten years upon all new and useful inventions. An examination of the invention, both as to novelty and utility, is made, and apparently a high standard as to both qualities is required. Patents upon inventions previously patented elsewhere are granted for only six years, or less if any foreign patent expires within that time.

—Sweden. The duration of patents is fifteen years, or less if any prior foreign patent expires within that time, and the duration is fixed in each case by the chamber of commerce. The patent issues only to the inventor. The patent can not be impeached after it has been issued eight months, but the invention must be worked in Sweden within from one to four years from the date of the patent, to preserve its validity, and yearly proof of such working must be given during the life of the patent.

—Spain. Four kinds of patents are granted in Spain. A patent of invention is granted for twenty years, and a patent of importation for ten years if the foreign patent is not more than two years old; a third species of patent is granted for five years to any person who will work an invention hitherto unpracticed in Spain, although known there theoretically; finally, patents of addition are granted for improvements, which expire with the patent for the main invention. Each Spanish patent covers Spain, the Balearic Isles, Cuba. Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. All new inventions, except medicines, may be patented, and the invention must be worked within the Spanish dominions within two years from the date of the patent.

—BIBLIOGRAPHY. Coke, 3 Inst., 184; Collier, Essay on the Law of Patents for New Inventions, London, 1803; Hands, The Law and Practice of Patents for Inventions, London, 1808; Godson, A Practical Treatise on the Law of Patents for Inventions and of Copyright; Rankin, An Analysis of the Law of Patents, London, 1824; Fessenden, Essay on the Law of Patents for New Inventions, Boston, 1822; Benouard, Traité des Brevets d'Invention, Paris, 1825; Regnault,
Edition: current; Page: [139]De la Legislation et de la Jurisprudence des Brevets d'Invention, Paris, 1825; Carpmael, Law of Patents for Inventions, London, 1836; Edwards, On Letters Patent for Inventions, London, 1865; Aston, A Paper on the Patent Laws; Dircks, The Policy of a Patent Law; Brown, Popular Treatise on Patent Laws, London, 1874; Macfie, Abolition of Patents: Recent Discussions in the United Kingdom and on the Continent, London, 1869; Macfie, Copyright and Patents for Inventions, London, 1883; Chevalier, Patents for Inventions Examined in their Relations to the Principle of Freedom of Industry; Thompson, Handbook of Patent Law, London, 1882; Curtis, Law of Patents, 4th ed., Boston, 1873; Simonds, Summary of the Law of Patents, New York, 1883, Kleinschrod, Die Internationale Patentgesetzgebung nach ihren Prinzipien, 1855; Loosey, Collection of the Laws of Patent Privileges, Vienna, 1849; Gareis, Patentgesetzgebung, Berlin, 1879: Phillips, Law of Patents for Inventions, N. Y., 1837; Whitman, Patent Laws and Practice of Obtaining Letters Patent for Inventions, 2d ed., Washington, 1875; Hindmarch, A Treatise on the Law relating to Patent Privileges, Lond., 1846; Webster, Law and Practice of Letters Patent for Inventions, Lond., 1841: Johnson, Patentee's Manual, 3d ed., Lond., 1866: Walker on Patents, N. Y., 1883; Merwin, Patentability of Inventions, Boston, 1883.

F. W. WHITRIDGE.

PATRONAGE

PATRONAGE, in the sense in which it comes especially within the scope of this work, is the control of appointments and employments for positions of a public nature. Broadly considered, it extends to all selections of persons for service in corporations, churches, schools and other positions not within the private business of the person to whom the patronage belongs. It may also be regarded as including honors, decorations and pensions, under aristocratic institutions. In law the power of appointment and employment usually, but not always, includes the power of promotion, removal and dismissal. It will be convenient, however, to treat these powers separately. (See PROMOTIONS, REMOVALS FROM OFFICE, SPOILS SYSTEM.)

—Patronage of a character more or less peculiar arises out of civil, military and naval administration, respectively. Wherever there is a state church or an ecclesiastical establishment, there is, as a consequence, a kind of patronage unknown under the government of the United States. If we had space for pursuing the subject from the public departments down through the management of landed estates, factories, mines, ships, railroads, banks, insurance companies, and manifold other corporations in which the selection and dismissal of many subordinates is an important part of the duties of superior officials, as well as a prolific source of favoritism, corruption and extravagance, we should find the subject full of interest and importance. We can hardly go beyond its more public relations, and shall especially consider its responsibilities and abuses.

—In its primary sense, in politics and the church, patronage was a friendly care exercised by a superior over those who had in some way come under his protection, calling for generosity and disinterestedness on the part of him who possessed it. Works of charity, beneficences and patriotism were said to be placed under the patronage of the great and the good; thus inviting sacrifice and support as a duty. In Rome patronage marked a peculiar social relation between the highest class and that next in order, based upon the reciprocal relation of protection and loyalty. While the more honorable application of the word is not unknown in our day, patronage is now generally accepted as implying a selfish if not a venal relation, or use of authority and influence. The patronage we are most familiar with is that which is used, more or less unscrupulously or corruptly, to aid a party, a church, a faction, a chieftain, or perhaps the official himself who exercises it, his relatives and his favorites. Yet the legal control of selections for office and public employments, when wisely and conscientiously exercised, is patronage in the worthy sense. In refusing any political connection between the government and the organizations and officials of religion, the framers of our system avoided a large amount of the most pernicious patronage by which both the churches and the civil administration of the older nations have been complicated and corrupted. So patronage under our system was still further limited by our rejection of class distinctions, social orders, titles, and a complicated system of discretionary pensions in civil life. It hardly need be pointed out that under despotic and monarchical governments this additional patronage of the crown, in the form of a power to create political distinctions of rank, to fill the high places in the church, to confer decorations, pensions and social precedence, has been no small part of the effective force and coherence of the government, as it has been of the sources of corruption. "Patronage-mongering" is a kind of criminal offense in Great Britain, against which criminal laws contain provisions. It was a maxim of Napoleon that "religion and honors are the two things by which mankind may be governed"; and even in this decade, Arthur Helps, in his "Thoughts on Government," says the conferring of honors is an important function of government. And this is not all; for that form of government which creates a landed aristocracy and a church hierarchy lays the foundation of a vast social patronage on the part of nobles and great officials, while it does not diminish the patronage incident to the ordinary civil, military and naval administration. Hardly more than this latter patronage can exist under our institutions. But it is plain that, as wealth and population increase, making government, business and society alike more complicated, the amount and power of patronage, becoming more and more social and mercenary, must greatly increase.

—The civil administration of the federal government was carried on the first year with a revenue of two million dollars, and with probably less than a thousand officials:
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it has now a hundred thousand. The federal postal service in the beginning required only seventy-five postmasters. Under Jackson's administration it required 8,000. Now there are more than 45,000 postmasters. The increase of state and municipal officials has been in much the same ratio. In New York city alone there are more than 2,500 civil officials under the federal government. About 10,000 officials serve there in the employment of the state and the city; the latter earning annual salaries amounting to about $10,000,000. To all these, army and navy officers and the great number of federal, state and municipal employés must be added. In order to gain some definite conception of the stupendous potency of patronage in this country, even as a mere political force, we must consider the whole body of its officials and employés, federal, state and municipal, perhaps half a million in all; the vast sums paid to them; the manifold bargains, beggings intrigues and contentions for these places; the formidable and ever active power of removal and promotion; to say nothing of the constant and vast authority for discipline, regulation and favors on the part of those by whom patronage is wielded. There is not a state, county, city, ward, town or village, if even there be a school district or hamlet, in which patronage is not a constant political and social influence that is courted or feared. In each nomination and election, from those of the president and the governors down to those of trustees, justices and constables, the element of patronage enters as a suspected and efficient element, whether it be the patronage of existing officials who intermeddle, or the patronage—hoped for or feared—of the officer about to be created. In the eyes of political managers patronage is one of the most sure and potent of forces, never lost sight of in campaigns, and almost never recognized as under moral obligations. Candidates are regarded by the politician class as available in the ratio of their adroitness in promising and their unscrupulousness in using patronage to bribe voters, to reward electioneerers, to buy the press, and to conciliate opponents and rivals. Appearing as an element in large measure extraneous to the merits of the candidate and the interests of the voters, the influence of patronage very naturally and easily tends to demoralize and corrupt. This result is helped by the fact that no other great and venal influence in politics is with so much facility exercised in 'secrecy, or is so readily kept beyond fear of responsibility. Bribery by the use of money may leave some traces in aid of detection, but how can it be proved in court that a hint or hope of a place or of an official favor secured a nomination, a vote, or a supporter? How can it be proved in a court that the fear of removal makes a large proportion of our officials servile henchmen of patronage-mongers, or that hundreds voted for a member of congress, a mayor or a governor, upon some assurance—not of course in a formal promise—that the patronage of the new official would be used for the advantage of venal voters? Unworthy relatives, favorites, henchmen and dependents are appointed or hired in superfluous numbers for the public service by patronage-mongering officials; but how is it possible, except in extreme cases, to prove any wrong beyond the unwise exercise of a large and but loosely defined official discretion? There is, perhaps, no form of abuse in public affairs so easily practiced as that form of patronage prostitution which can secretly take place between a corrupt officer and a venal office seeker. One of the great evils of political life, under all forms of government, has been the abuse of official discretion in the use of patronage corruptly or selfishly. And it hardly need be said that, under the republican system in the United States—greatly as the sphere of patronage has been curtailed—it is yet one of the most potent elements of corruption and extravagance in our politics, the portentous effects of which are arousing the patriotic classes to a great effort for their removal. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.) The pressure for patronage became very strong before any president yielded to it. It was great under Jefferson, and greater still under the last Adams. In 1825-6 the senate, on motion of Mr. Macon, appointed a committee to devise means for its reduction, which made an able report. The committee's report speaks of the "political machine," and urges the necessity of arresting the growing power and corruption of patronage. Five years before, Mr. Crawford, a secretary of the treasury and a candidate for the presidency, had procured the passage of a bill creating a four-years term for collectors, as Mr. Adams says, for the purpose of increasing his patronage.

—It should not be overlooked that a part of the power and corruption of patronage grows out of the ability of political managers and the patronage-mongering class to tax the salaries of office holders for the payment of party and election expenses. (See POLITICAL ASSESSMENTS.) The patronage system has yet another great element of strength—the ability of party managers and the lords of patronage to compel those to whom they give offices and employment to work, vote and be obedient to their orders in all political matters. In that feature of the system, which impairs the proper self-respect and independence of the public servant, is the great source alike of the servility of our subordinate officials and of the arrogance and potency of chieftains and party managers. No element adds more than this to the fierceness of these contests for patronage in which victory gives them a following of feudal dependents. (See SPOILS SYSTEM.) The abuse of patronage has not been confined to those upon whom the law confers it, but members of legislatures, of congress and of city councils, have usurped the appointing power of the executive, for the purpose of taking to themselves the patronage for their own advantage. Nothing is more essential to good administration than a real separation, in
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practice, of the executive from the legislative department, which is so carefully provided in our constitution and in that of every other enlightened nation. Indeed, the stability and perpetuity of the government depend on the preservation of the counterpoise of these departments. The officers at the head of the administration can be made to feel responsible for its good management directly—discipline can be preserved therein—only when they are able to control the selection and removal of all those below them. When presidents, governors or mayors are disposed to treat the power of selection and removal of their subordinates as so much patronage to be used selfishly in their own interest or that of their party, we know that great evils threaten the public interests. Still, when the authority and duty of selection and removal are, as they should be, left solely in the executive branch, the sense of undivided responsibility to the people is a salutary restraint. But no such sense of responsibility is felt when that power has been usurped by the members of the legislative department. The people do not regard the executive officer, nor does he feel himself responsible for good administration. The two departments secretly unite in foisting their electioneering agents, their favorites and dependents, upon the pay rolls of the treasury. Neither feels responsible for what he helped to do.

—Looked at from another point of view, we see it to be most dangerous to allow legislators—who fix salaries and the number to be employed in the executive service, and whose special duty it is to expose and arrest all abuses therein—to acquire a selfish and partisan interest in the increase of the numbers and salaries of these subordinates. They have no longer the courage or independence needed for that duty. The first salary to be reduced may be that of the relative or favorite of a member; the first person that should be dismissed, his electioneering agent. Yet members of congress—and of legislatures only in less degree—have become the greatest patronage-mongers of the country; usurping control over such subordinates in order to gain the patronage of places to be pledged for votes and other support in their elections; thus becoming directly interested, for themselves and their party, in the increase of the members and compensation of such subordinates. In that way, congressmen, in duty bound to aid the high executive officers in the practice of economy, have, through their appeals and solicitations for more patronage, become a cause of extravagance and corruption alike. They go through the departments and besiege secretaries and heads of bureaus for places. Congressional patronage—usurped congressional patronage, for, legally and properly, congressmen have no patronage whatever—has become one of the most corrupting and dangerous influences in our national affairs. In no way perhaps does it appear more threatening than in connection with the power of confirmation by the senate. (See CONFIRMATION.) This congressional usurpation of patronage has not been confined to civil offices, but extends to appointments in the military and naval service likewise. It has also taken from the executive almost exclusive control of the selections of cadets for the military and naval schools at West Point and Annapolis. Many members have unquestionably exercised this usurped control patriotically and honestly. Public opinion has so overawed others that they have, with great advantage to those schools, allowed the cadetships included in their patronage to be freely competed for and to be bestowed upon the most worthy, as shown by the competitive examinations. But in a great majority of cases, the patronage of these cadet selections has been simply added by congressmen to the mass of their civil patronage, which is one of the great forces that determine congressional nominations and elections. Vague hints in various quarters, that support may gain an appointment to one of these schools, may be made to secure many votes. To gain control of as much patronage as possible before the elections, and after the elections to find places for those to whom they have promised appointments and employment as a reward for electioneering, votes and puffing, during elections, absorb no small portion of the time and thoughts of all the more unscrupulous and partisan candidates and members of congress.

—The late President Garfield spoke emphatically on these points. In a speech at Williams college, he said: "Congressmen have become the dispensers, sometimes the brokers, of patronage. One-third of the working hours of senators and representatives is hardly sufficient to meet the demands made upon them in reference to appointments for office." In an article in the "Atlantic Monthly," for July, 1877, he says: "The present system invades the independence of the executive, and makes him less responsible for the character of his appointments; it impairs the efficiency of the legislator, by diverting him from his proper sphere of duty and involving him in the intrigues of the aspirants for office." In a speech in congress, in 1870, he made it clear that congressional pressure for patronage is as willful on the part of members as it is disastrous to the country. This is his language: "We press such appointments upon the departments; we crowd the doors; senators and representatives throng the bureaus and offices until the public business is obstructed; the patience of officers is worn out, and sometimes for fear of losing their places by our influence, they at last give way and appoint men, not because they are fit for the position, but because we ask it." As a further example of the consequences of the abuse of patronage, it may be stated, upon what seems reliable authority, that at least one-third of the time of President Garfield (before his injury) was absorbed by applicants for office, and that more than six-sevenths of the calls made upon one of his secretaries during a period of three
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months were for office seeking. Such are the effects in the higher departments of the government of converting the appointing power into patronage for selfish and partisan purposes. We have no space for tracing the consequences of a similar prostitution of patronage in state legislatures, city councils, or in the various grades of office throughout the country. (For a general statement of the abuses with which this prostitution is connected, see SPOILS SYSTEM.)

—So vast and familiar have the evils of patronage become, that some of the American people almost despair of their removal, while many more have come to regard them as original and inevitable under our institutions. It will not, therefore, be unprofitable to refer to the same evils and the manner of their removal in Great Britain, to whose administrative system ours is most analogous. (See Eaton's "Civil Service in Great Britain.")

—Wherever government purely despotic exists, offices and places are bestowed absolutely in the discretion of the ruler. Patronage, in its usual sense, can only exist where some degree of obligation to use it for the common benefit is recognized by the appointing power, and that power is, in some measure, held by great officers of state. Under the lowest forms of patronage we find offices and places salable, that is, treated as perquisites and merchandise, with but the faintest recognition of a moral obligation in the matter. We have only to go back a century or two in the history of the leading nations of Europe, to come upon a period when every grade of office and public employment and the patronage of the same were bought and sold, either openly or secretly, by kings, by princes, by nobles and bishops, by generals and admirals, by lords and those of every grade in the social and official scale influential enough to purchase or control a bit of patronage. Even within this century the English government has provided by law for the purchase, by itself, of patronage and offices (for the purpose of making them really public again), which had been for many generations private property, mere merchandise in the hands of patronage-mongers. In the British army the buying and selling of offices and the patronage of the same were openly carried on and were recognized as legal by the government, under the name of "purchase," up to 1871. English army officers generally obtained their commissions by purchasing them at the market price. The patronage of these offices had formerly been in a considerable measure a part of the perquisites of members of parliament. And when, in 1870, the attempt was made to suppress that patronage-merchandise, there were members of parliament who contended that such a system of patronage and purchase was essential to good army administration in Great Britain, just as there are now many members in our congress and many intelligent politicians who contend that civil patronage is essential to the life of parties and the management of our politics. So strongly was that theory supported in Great Britain that the bill for the suppression of patronage and purchase in the army was thrown out in the house of lords in 1871; but the abuse was in the same year suppressed by a royal warrant which superseded the old regulation on which purchase had rested. It was, however only done on the basis of an allowance by the government to the army patronage-vendees, as having a vested property in what they had purchased. An open competition of merit, determined by examinations, took the place of patronage and purchase for gaining office in the army, and cadetships in the military and naval schools. And promotions have been generally placed on the same basis (with a certain regard for seniority), to the credit and advantage of those parts of the public service.

—Almost from the organization of the state church of England, there has been a complicated system of merchantable patronage in its official life, nor is it by any means yet suppressed. Greatly as the public opinion of this country is blinded and blunted by long familiarity with the evils of patronage in our political administration, it can hardly contemplate without a shock the prostitution of patronage which long existed in that church, or even look without surprise upon the part of it which still survives there after patronage has ceased in her civil administration. Many of our party managers, who regard our vicious political patronage as original here, if not as quite defensible, affect astonishment at its counterpart in the church of England; they are too blinded or too ignorant to comprehend the fact that the same form of patronage we tolerate long existed in Great Britain, but has been suppressed there by methods which might be made equally salutary here.

—The appointment of archbishops and bishops, until the present century, was there as venal, mercenary and regardless of the public interests as the creation of noblemen, the gift of pensions and the bestowal of franchises, all of which were in large measure bestowed as bribes or as rewards for subserviency to the crown or the aristocracy. George III. made his infant son a bishop. It was the custom for an archbishop on the consecration of a bishop, to name a favorite of his own, whom the bishop was to "take care of," that is, to provide with a place and a salary. The bishop imitated that example in dealing with the rector; and thus through every grade a system of vicious patronage extended, down to the beadle and the chorister. This patronage was protected by law, as in the nature of property; that of the archbishop being known as his "option." Simony and nepotism were but designations of a particular phase of patronage. The right, or privilege, of officiating in a church (as a minister, according to our phraseology) was called a "benefice," or, in popular language, a "living," a name which marks the mercenary view taken of it. The right to hold this benefice, or living, was an "advowson," which was, in other words, the patronage of the rectorship or church. That patronage of a church, the advowson, including the titles and income, was sometimes regularly bought and
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sold long after the edifice had gone to decay, and the worshipers had died or scattered. The advowson (or right of filling the benefice) might be bought and many times transferred while an occupying rector was still officiating. The owner of the advowson was the patron of the benefice. This advowson, or patronage, was emphatically property, and was as fully protected by law and as regularly and openly bought and sold as cattle or grain; and with considerable limitations favorable to capacity, character and publicity, advowsons in the church of England are still generally bought and sold. The person presented by the purchaser, or the purchaser himself if he wishes to officiate, must be approved by the bishop before he can enter upon the enjoyment of his living; but the worshipers have no power to keep him out or to put one of their choice in, not even so much power of that kind as have our citizens to secure a good appointment in a city department against the will of the "boss" or the party managers. Many advowsons are at all times in the market for sale. The following is a specimen advertisement (of a very usual form) cut from the "London Times," of September, 1870: "Advowson for Sale (a Rectory), situated close to a good town in an eastern county. Situation most healthy and pleasant. Good society. Income, about £250 a year; and there is a prospect of a very early possession; excellent vicarage house, grounds, etc. Address J. B. Hill, 51 Hollywood Road, West Brompton."

—What scandalous consequences followed such a patronage system in more despotic and corrupt times, Mr. Froude tells us (History, vol. v., pp. 255-257) in this language: "In the country the patron of the benefice no longer made distinction between a clergyman and a layman. * * He presented his huntsman, his steward or his game keeper. * * The cathedrals and churches of London became the chosen scenes of riot and profanity, St. Paul's was the stock exchange of the day, where the merchants met for business and the lounge; where gallants gambled and fought, and killed each other." It was the natural result of such a system of church patronage, that he who had bought the office or place in the church was regarded as the owner of it, and under the common law of England even parish clerks and sextons have freeholds in their offices.

—Patronage in the church of Scotland was hardly less mercenary and disastrous. It was known as "lay patronage." John Knox in vain attempted to arrest it. It secured recognition by law, and led to scandalous acts of violence. For generations it was a prolific source of venality, favoritism and corruption, not only in the Scotch church, but in the whole civil administration of Scotland. It finally became so intolerable to the better sentiment of the Scotch church that in the first quarter of this century it caused a disruption of the church itself. Dr. Chalmers, leading the party which made a stand against patronage, secured a majority in the general assembly in 1834. A long litigation followed, in which the Scotch church patronage-mongers had the hearty sympathy of the English patronage-mongers. The courts affirmed a right of private property in church patronage. Thereupon Dr. Chalmers left the state church, and carried with him more than one-third of all the clergy of the church of Scotland. "Their once crowded churches were surrendered to others, while they went forth to preach on the hillsides, and in tents, barns and stables." (2 May's Constitutional History, p. 442.) In eighteen years more than $26,000,000 were contributed for the purposes of the new organization, now known as the "Free Church of Scotland."

—Supported by such elements of venality and corruption outside of party politics, it is hardly necessary to say that patronage in the civil administration of Great Britain was far worse than any we have yet developed, or that its removal was made far more difficult by reason of the patronage-mongers of the army, of the church and of the civil administration making common cause together. Whatever reform directly threatened one, indirectly threatened all. In her civil administration every grade of office and place centuries ago became patronage in the control of somebody—of the crown, of the princes, of nobles, of bishops, of great landlords, of cabinet officers, of members of parliament, of parties and of party managers. More grossly and boldly than ever with us, unworthy men were given places, and needless numbers were foisted upon the public pay rolls, in order to increase the amount of patronage. As with us, the public officials and employés neglected their duties in order to serve their patrons; and the most intolerable incompetency, inefficiency and corruption existed in the municipal administration. In the greed for increasing patronage, and for making it valuable to patronage-mongers and parties, the paramount tests for appointments were not fitness, but opinions, and the promise and prospect of work for the party and the patrons.

—Until about the beginning of this century parliament had not become so potent in the state as to enable its members to usurp any great share of patronage. But as their influence increased, they used it to increase their patronage. George III. was the last king who was able by direct authority to put limits to that parliamentary usurpation. He used the vast patronage of the crown as relentlessly as Jackson used that of the executive for partisan ends. He also used public money, equally with patronage, to corrupt opponents, to reward supporters, to make presents to favorites, and to bribe members of parliament. Under his immediate successors, members of parliament took to themselves the largest part of all civil patronage, and they continued to hold and to use it in aid of their own elections, their party and their favorites, until the triumph of the reform policy by which it has been suppressed. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.) The patronage of members of parliament finally became the greatest and the most persistent obstacle in the way of reform, just as the patronage of our members of congress is now such an obstacle; in
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each country alike blinding the eyes, debauching the conscience and corrupting the morals of the members of the legislature; though such patronage here has by no means yet reached the shameless aggravation which it attained in Great Britain during the first half of this century. But with us it has one pernicious element not known, at least in this century, in Great Britain—that of political assessments, through which the patronage-mongering members of congress are able to coerce the public servants to pay ready money as well as do servile work for carrying congressional elections. In Great Britain the sale of offices in early times prevented the growth of the abuse of assessments; for who would pay a full price for an office, if, like ours, it was subject to an annual rent in the form of an assessment to be fixed at the discretion of members of parliament and party chieftains? Members of parliament were so suspicious of each other, and scrambled so intolerably among themselves for more and more patronage and a greater share of what there was, that, in mere self-protection, an officer was provided, known as the "patronage secretary," who arranged and supervised an equitable apportionment of the spoils; keeping books in which each member was credited with his share, and debited from time to time with the doles of the patronage he received. We have only reached the stage of patronage evolution at which much the same thing is done secretly and in a scramble by our members of congress, with frequent scruples and many protestations of disgust. It only requires time, however, to reach the full stage of the flaunting, shameless British development of fifty years ago.

—The experience of Great Britain is especially interesting, not only as showing the results which our evolution is soon likely to reach if not arrested, but as showing how such an evil, buttressed by many elements of strength with which we are not confronted, may be overcome. For patronage, in any other sense than the mere exercise of the appointing power in the public interest alone, has, in the civil administration of Great Britain, been, with very slight exceptions, suppressed. Members of parliament have lost their usurped control over appointments, and are therefore without patronage of any kind.

—After the creation of a sounder public opinion, the principal means there used for the suppression of civil patronage was the enforcement of rigid competitive examinations of fitness before appointments, by which the qualifications were tested which were required for holding the places sought. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM, ante, and "Civil Service in Great Britain," by D. B. Eaton.) Such examinations and conditions are obviously fatal to all partisan and mercenary enjoyment of patronage, and for that reason were opposed by patronage-mongering members of parliament, as they are now opposed by our patronage-mongering members of congress.

—The work of patronage suppression in Great Britain was also aided by more effective laws against bribery (known as office brokerage laws) than any in force in this country. (See work last cited, pp. 132 to 139.) Our statutes make bribery to consist in giving or promising "money or something of value" for the doing of the act, as voting, appointing, etc., and they do not extend to the promising of nominations or confirmations, or to influence for procuring them. The English statutes go much further; making it a penal offense to enter into contract for, on to engage in the business of, procuring offices or places for a consideration of a corrupt nature, whether valuable or not. The promise of official influence for votes or appointments is such a consideration. Some of the most comprehensive of our decisions against bribery and the corrupt use of patronage are based solely on English precedents—facts which plainly illustrate the potency of the patronage interest in our legislation.

—In the last few years there has been a rapid growth of public opinion, which sternly condemns our patronage system. Never has the levying of political assessments been so vigorously arraigned as during the present year (1883). More and more our statesmen are becoming convinced that the enforcement of that system does not even give strength to a party. Sober reflection and a more careful observance of facts are convincing them that fidelity to principles, the selection of worthy men for office, and honest, efficient administration, and not a venal and proscriptive use of patronage, are the true and sufficient sources of vigor, vitality and power in a party. British experience on the subject is securing the attention of our thinkers in politics. The enforcement of competitive examinations at the postoffice and custom house at New York city, through which the patronage there has been suppressed, by enabling the most worthy to win the places, in utter disregard and defeat of the practices and interests of the old patronage-mongers and chieftains of New York politics, has done much to convince the public that only a practicable and becoming effort is needed to achieve a suppression of patronage in our civil administration, as complete and salutary as that which has been accomplished in that of Great Britain.

—In that broad sense in which patronage may be held to include the legal and faithful exercise of the appointing power, it must always exist, and must become greater with the increase of our population and commerce. What is needed is a public opinion which shall be wise, virtuous and patriotic enough to enforce such exercise of that power, when aided by the better practical methods that are available for our use. It is necessary that every official should be educated to accept, and compelled by law and public opinion to act upon, the theory that there can be no proper and legal public patronage in which any officers or citizens can have a pecuniary interest, or, in other words, that there is no more moral or legal right to use the appointing power than there is to use the public money for the private advantage of any citizen, officer or party. We must have a public opinion which treats one of these offenses as being equally
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reprehensible with the other. For the legal principles applicable to this part of the subject, see REMOVALS.

DORMAN B. EATON.

PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY

PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY. (See GRANGERS.)

PAUPERISM

PAUPERISM. It is not to be supposed that the essence of pauperism is anything else in America than it is now in Europe, or than it was in the states of antiquity. But, just as the conditions of poverty among the Romans, the Greeks, and the Hebrews, were widely different from those of England and France in the eighteenth century, so now the conditions of poverty in a new and advancing industrial republic like the United States, must be very unlike those which have prevailed among the Latin, the Sclavonic, the Teutonic or the Celtic races of Europe; settled as they are under ancient and fixed institutions, where the distinctions of wealth and poverty are comparatively immutable. Where class distinctions have hardened into caste, pauperism must be a different thing from that degree of poverty which prevails among a people of permanent equality, or of ever-changing inequality. The modern city and the manufacturing towns are strong examples of this fluctuating inequality, where the working man of to-day may be the industrial chieftain ten years hence; and where vast fortunes, swiftly accumulated, are suddenly dispersed and scattered throughout a multitude. On the other hand, the villages and rural districts of America, and of some European countries, offer examples of permanent equality, which, of all conditions, is least favorable to pauperism.

—M. Baudrillart, in an article published in Block's Dictionnaire de la Politique, asserts that it is less than a century since the sphinx of pauperism began to put her destructive questions to the industrial nations of Europe. But this "riddle of the painful earth" is no modern one, though its form may have changed with the last century. The agglomeration of poverty in great manufacturing centres, like Manchester, Lyons, and the vast capital cities of London, Paris, Vienna, etc., undoubtedly accentuates and renders more perceptible the pauperism of the last half century. But is it not also true, as M. Baudrillart says, that great cities have always been sad nurseries of poverty? In Rome, from the earliest period of its urban greatness until it had been twice sacked by the barbarians in the time of St. Augustine, a period of at least five centuries, the relief of the poor was one of the chief functions of the state, and a very embarrassing one. The "corn laws" of Caius Gracchus (B. C. 128) were poor-laws; but the distribution of food under this questionable legislation was not wholly gratuitous, until Clodius the demagogue made it so, in the time of Cæsar's Gallic war. Returning from his victory over Pompey, Cæsar found 820,000 persons (the chronicles say) receiving this kind of out-door relief, in and about Rome; more than a fifth part of the whole population, if the figures were reasonably exact. He reduced them to 150,000, which was still, perhaps, one in eight of the population. The civil wars that brought Augustus to the throne raised this number to 300,000, which Augustus, in turn, reduced to 200,000; but when he gave his subjects an extraordinary donative, says Merivale, "the numbers who partook of his bounty swelled again to 320,000." (History of the Romans under the Empire, chap. xxxiv.) This careful English author supposes that the 200,000 occasional paupers mentioned by Augustus represented the whole poorer sort of citizens; while the 320,000 included those below the senatorial and equestrian rank. In any case, these enormous figures, though swollen by duplications, like the pauper statistics of modern times, show what a cancer pauperism had become in imperial Rome, which devoted a large share of its annual budget to the various methods of relief. Under the Antonines, when philanthropy and population had both increased, the number on the poor-rates of Rome is stated at 500,000. No modern city, except possibly Paris in the famine years of the revolution, or during the siege of 1871, could show so large a proportion of paupers to population. For this the simple reason seems to have been, that the familiar saying of Franklin, "If every man and woman would work four hours each day in something useful, that labor would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life," was far less descriptive of ancient Rome than of great cities in recent times.

—In this view, and looking back over 2,000 years, it can hardly be said, as M. Baudrillart maintains, that "the concentration of pauperism has increased with the progress of industry," except in the restricted sense that the concentration of inhabitants, which industrial progress has produced, is necessarily accompanied by a like concentration of poverty. Indeed, the same writer goes on to say that this very progress of industry has lessened the sufferings of the poor, and increased the number of those who live in comfort. This is certainly the general result, though the crowding of artisans and operatives into manufacturing centres does often produce the sanitary, moral and economic evils which we all recognize from M. Baudrillart's description. In too many cities of manufacturing industry, rents rise and wages fall; the dark and narrow street, the promiscuous lodging house, the damp cellar, become the abode of laborious poverty, as well as of lurking crime; the father of a family drinks, the wife deserts the cheerless home, the son becomes a "loafer," and the daughter a prostitute. This happens often in France, Belgium and England, and is not unknown in America; to which the operatives throng by thousands from those very cities of Europe in which the evils mentioned are most rife. It must not be forgotten, however, that the sharper contrast which cities afford of the extremes of wealth and poverty, and the
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attractive force exercised by accumulated wealth in drawing together a corresponding accumulation of poverty, account in part for the startling picture of misery and degradation which manufacturing towns so often furnish. The same crime and misery scattered through a thousand rural neighborhoods would affect the public sensibility less than when it is found concentrated in Birmingham, Mulhausen or the manufacturing regions along the Rhine and its tributaries.

—It is further to be noted that, while the ancient cities were capitals of conquest and of commerce, the modern capitals are much more centres of manufacture and of public resort. The present age is migratory, both for the rich and the poor, and even the classes between travel for business or pleasure much more than the rich formerly could. Rome is no longer the seat of empire, but a caravansary for virtuosos and tourists; Paris is the home of pleasure, but also, and still more, the workshop of useful industry; so, too, each in its degree, are Vienna and New York. Migration, on the large scale in which it now takes place in central and western Europe and in America, is both a source of pauperism and a check upon its growth. It is to the immigrants and their children that we look for most of the public poverty that is now seen in the United States; yet the emigration of these very persons, or their fathers, from Europe, has checked the growth of pauperism in the countries they came from. With these preliminary remarks we may come at once to the subject in hand.

—In a restricted sense, pauperism is that degree of poverty for which public relief is provided; in a broader definition, it is that condition of body, or temper of mind, in large numbers of people, which makes them easy applicants for public or private relief. In the former sense, the word is a mere definition; in the latter, it points to a distinct and formidable social evil, always to be deplored though not to be wholly avoided. In neither sense is it new to the world's history, in the earlier chapters of which we find traces that pauperism was known and felt as an evil. But as a recognized and preventable evil, as a social solecism and a public nuisance, it has never attracted so much attention as now, in all parts of the world. In early times slavery replaced pauperism, and prevented its lesser mischiefs from receiving due notice; in the Christian dispensation, until recently, the relief of the poor has been viewed as a religious duty, and these mischiefs of pauperism have sometimes been fostered in the name of religion. For a century past, the saying of Burke, that "the age of sophisters and economists has come," is certainly true as applied to this subject. The religious motive for dispensing charity has been kept in the background, while its economical demerits have been increasingly insisted on. Were human nature other than it is, the religious and philanthropic side of charity might be expected to vanish from consideration, while logic and utility should rule. But the social and spiritual affections of mankind are such that pity will always give are charity begins, even for objects unworthy, and charity will keep on giving until good sense says "You are creating the evil you mean to cure." It has been a view of this consequence of public charity that, in recent times, has led to so many efforts for the prevention of pauperism, and so much censure on the practice of alms-giving, even for needful relief. Dr. Lieber, writing more than fifty years ago, when the founders of the English school of political economy were still living, and more influential than they are ever likely to be again, said: "In England, where wages are low, compared with the expense of living, an ordinary laborer often can not save anything against the time of decrepitude or sickness; and the children of suffering parents must suffer with them. By what means shall their present distress be relieved? The economists of the new school" (this was in 1831), "namely, that of Mr. Malthus, Mr. Ricardo, Mr. M'Culloch, and others, say that they are to be abandoned to starvation. But, says Lieber, "a doctrine so abhorrent to our nature is only a hideous theory, which can not enter into the law or habits of any people, until human nature shall be sunk into brutal hardheartedness. The dictates of religion, conscience and compassion enjoin upon us to give relief." Here is the whole question stated; and its solution must depend upon the wisdom and the daily details of administering those measures by which relief is now given, and in the future is anticipated or prevented.

—Among the latter measures M. Baudrillart, with excellent sense, but perhaps in a manner too vague and general, specifies primary and professional instruction, combined with moral education; a better system of housing the poor, too often crowded into unwholesome lodgings, so that better sanitary conditions may permit a better moral atmosphere; the dispersing of manufactories throughout rural districts; and finally, the general progress of civilization and industry, so that increased productive power may enlarge production. In solving the problem of pauperism, he says: "To increase production is the first step; to assist equitable and humane distribution of the products, is the second, which would be useless without the first; for nothing else could insure that, where there is but little, each person should be above want." Another French writer, M. Baron, who in 1881 took the Pereira prize for an elaborate work on French pauperism, entitled Le Paupérisme, Ses Causes et ses Remèdès, par A. Baron (Sandoz 8 Thuillier, Editeurs, Paris, 1882), goes into minute details concerning these general preventives of pauperism, laying stress particularly on the means of inducing the work people of his country to deposit in savings banks, insure their lives, and by other approved economical precautions, raise themselves above the dangerous level of their present poverty, from which it is but a step, in illness, old age or vice, to the abyss of pauperism. No recent work has treated
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more fully or ably of these subjects, and there is a degree of practical wisdom (not always found in economical writers) in almost all M. Baron's observations. I may except some petulant remarks which he makes concerning the "People's Banks" of the late Herr Schulze-Delitzsch, a German economist, whose services have been perhaps overrated, but who does not deserve all the scorn which M. Baron pours out upon him.

—M. Baron's book is clear in its definitions, and recent in its statistics, and I shall make much use of it in what follows concerning European pauperism. His definition of pauperism in the individual (which the French call misère—a word carefully to be distinguished from our English word "misery," by which it is often translated) is striking, and may be quoted. He says: "Poverty, then, is not pauperism; the former is relative, the latter absolute. At Rome, when everybody was poor, there were no paupers; it was the growing luxury of some which disclosed the poverty of others. But pauperism (misère) is the minus side of material existence, the foot of the human ladder (le fond de l'objection humaine); the pauper is confronted by this dilemma, to eat the bread of another or to die. A sad choice! either beggary or robbery or death; the degradation of alms, the dishonor of a thief, or death by starvation."

—This may describe pauperism in Europe, but with us no such fatal alternative is ordinarily presented. There have been deaths from starvation in America, but they were generally suicides, or the result of mental decay; there have been many thefts for which poverty was the excuse, and there has been much beggary in some of our great cities, but neither starvation, mendicancy nor theft have naturally occurred in our new country because of extreme poverty.

—The principles of prevention systematically developed by recent authors on the subject may be found concisely stated in Defoe, Adam Smith, and other early writers. That great pupil of Adam Smith, the younger Pitt, in a speech to the house of commons in February, 1796, while discussing a new poor law, said: "These great points of granting relief according to the number of children, preventing removals at the caprice of the parish officer, and making them subscribe to friendly societies, would tend in a very great degree to remove every ground of complaint. * * All this, however, I will confess is not enough, if we do not engraft upon the law resolutions to discourage relief where it is not wanted. * * The extension of schools of industry is also an object of material importance. The suggestion of these schools was originally drawn from Lord Hale and Mr. Locke, and upon such authority I have no hesitation in recommending the plan to the encouragement of the legislature. * * Such a plan would convert the relief granted to the poor into an encouragement for industry, instead of being, as it is by the present poor laws, a premium for idleness and a school for sloth. There are also a number of subordinate circumstances to which it is necessary to attend. The law which prohibits giving relief where any visible property remains, should be abolished. That degrading condition should be withdrawn. No temporary occasion should force a British subject to part with the last shilling of his little capital, and to descend to a state of wretchedness from which he could never recover, merely that he might be entitled to a casual supply." These remarks are all wise, and most of them are practical; but the new poor law proposed by Pitt in 1796 (which may be found printed at length in a valuable but little known work, Sir F. M. Eden's "State of the Poor," London, 1797), was burlesqued by Bentham, and did not find acceptance with parliament. In supporting it Pitt said he conceived, that, to promote the free circulation of labor, and remove the obstacles by which industry is prohibited from availing itself of its own resources, would go far to diminish the necessity of relief from the poor rates. He also recommended that "an annual report should be made to parliament, which should take on itself the duty of tracing the effects of its own system from year to year, till it should be fully matured; that, in short, there should be a yearly poor-law budget, by which the legislature would show that they had a watchful eye upon the interests of the poorest and most neglected part of the community." This suggestion has since been adopted, not only in England, but in many other countries, and in the separate states of our own country, as I shall show presently.

—Of the English poor laws in general, Mr. Senior once said that they had their origin, during the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., "in an attempt substantially to restore the expiring system of slavery." This is a remark profoundly true; and it may further be said that the subsequent legislation, even down to a very recent period, in England, was quite as much in the line of preserving class distinctions as of alleviating the distress of the poor. In this respect the pauper system of England—indeed, of all Europe—and that of the United States, differ radically. Certain unavoidable distinctions do appear in our legislation, notably those arising from immigration in the north, and from the difference of race in the southern states; but the general spirit of the American poor laws has been friendly to the advancement of the poor man. In England and France, on the contrary, the effort for centuries was to keep the poor man "in his place," that is, to keep him still poor, and use him as a prop for the comfort and luxury of the privileged classes above him. An English pamphleteer, of no great fame, but of much good sense (Charles Lamport), made these remarks in 1870 concerning the traditional treatment of the English poor, under the laws of his country: "The poor-law theory is, that all occupiers of houses and lands shall contribute to a general fund, localized for better administration, to make provision against the wants and claims of the destitute. Its practice is, that no destitute
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person, however meritorious, can benefit by this organization without having to pass under something very like the old Roman yoke. On the one side of the Caudine forks, a man stands erect, self-respecting and respected, and with name unstained; on the other side he crouches, a changed and degraded being. He has become a social pariah, hopes destroyed, spirit crushed, reputation gone. Society, before it yields what it dare not refuse, so embitters the morsel by contempt that neither giver nor receiver is blessed in the act. The terms 'pauper,' 'parish,' 'poor relief,' all savor of social reproach. The poor are taught that it is virtuous to shrink from everything appertaining to the whole system. A beggar, even, will unblushingly ask for alms 'to keep himself off the parish'! On the other hand, the rich avoid the whole system as something tainted by social leprosy, and equally shrink from all but enforced contact. From father to son, through many a generation, the unconscious legacy of contempt and hard dealing has descended to us. Nothing testifies so clearly to the prevalent feeling of the upper classes as the persistent rigor of all legislation affecting the poor for 800 years. From Saxon serfdom down to modern pauperism the old key-note of contempt and isolation vibrates unchanged."

—Of late years the harshness of the English system has been softened considerably. Mr. Goschen, when president of the old poor-law board in 1870, said: "It can not be denied that the more humane views which have prevailed during the last few years, as to the treatment of the sick poor, have added most materially to poor-law expenditures. Workhouses, originally designed mainly as a test for the able bodied, have, especially in the large towns, been of necessity gradually transferred into infirmaries for the sick; and the higher standard for hospital accommodations has had a material effect upon the expenditures." The process here mentioned by Mr. Goschen has been going on rapidly in Great Britain and Ireland, and, indeed, in almost every European country, since 1870. In America the same thing has happened, and even to a greater extent. Whatever success has followed the attempts to regulate pauperism, either in America or Europe, has been gained by reversing the English practice of suspicion, contempt and abasement; by classifying the poor according to their real character and needs, and treating the money for their relief as an insurance fund, to which they or their representatives had contributed their full share. The poor rate is, properly, an insurance premium; the poor-law system of any country should be what Mr. Lamport desires to make that of England, a "National Friendly Society." That the plague of pauperism has never spread widely in America is due mainly to our institutions, and the opportunity which is offered to the poor man; that it has been controlled and diminished, where a dense population and the varied competitions of industry had given it a foothold, must be ascribed, in part at least, to measures such as Mr. Pitt recommended, enforced in a country where external circumstances have made it easier than it ever has been in England. It was certainly one of the strangest vagaries of the reasoning faculty which led Englishmen, in the early half of the present century, to deny that public charity was a duty, or even an admissible interference with individual duties and the laws of political economy; yet so common was this view, fifty years ago, that Edward Livingston, in the introduction to his "Penal Code for Louisiana," felt called upon to stop and refute it. He pointed out, what everybody admits in practice, that every community owes a social duty to the individuals that compose it, and is bound to guarantee them their lives and property, that the obligation to protect life is greater than any other, since all the rest depends upon it; and that the prevention of death by poverty is as much a public duty as the repression of murder is. From this impregnable position he proceeded to develop his own ingenious and mainly correct system of the administration of public charity.

—Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, a contemporary of Edward Livingston, gave his attention even more directly to the question of pauperism. In a report to the Massachusetts legislature, in 1821, he recommended "placing the whole subject of the poor in the commonwealth under the regular and annual superintendence of the legislature," thus anticipating, by more than forty years, the course that has since been adopted by all the larger and more important states in the Union, and is likely to become the universal American policy. The creation of boards of charities in Massachusetts in 1863, in New York and Ohio in 1868, in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Rhode Island in 1869, and in Wisconsin and other states in more recent years is the modern interpretation of the recommendation made by Mr. Quincy to the Massachusetts legislature. The establishment of these boards has resulted in a much fuller knowledge of pauperism in America than could before be obtained. Co-operating with thousands of local officers, and with the general tendency of American ideas and institutions, they have labored to reduce pauperism to its lowest terms, to ameliorate the condition of all the dependent and defective classes, and to prevent the formation or continuance of that permanent case of the poor which is the curse of European civilizations. The experience of Massachusetts and of other states shows that this is possible to a great extent. In the midst of the activities, generous or base, and the distracting turmoil of American life, it is cheering to find that we are really making progress in this direction; that we have not only abolished slavery and the political distinctions founded thereon, but are steadily advancing toward emancipation from the most hideous forms and consequences of the pauperism that everywhere replaces slavery when first abolished. The so-called "feudalism of capital"—a vague phrase, which yet has a recognized
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shade of meaning—does something to perpetuate pauperism, but the material advantages which organized capital gives to the poor, are working, on the whole, against the increase of paupers. This is seen even in English manufacturing towns, and still more in those of America.

—Historically speaking, there is a certain connection, though not a very close one, between the American poor laws and the evil with which they deal, and the poor laws of England and pauperism there. Mention has been made of the earliest legislation of England, but the progressive steps of the system now existing there may be more definitely noted. It is less than three centuries since the law of England distinctly made provision for the support of the poor at the public charge. By an act of parliament in 1572 the office of overseer of the poor was established, and by the act of 1601 (43 Elizabeth) a general plan of relief for the poor was adopted and enforced throughout England. But there were laws and customs bearing more or less directly on the condition of the poor, and dating back, according to Sir George Nicholls, to the time of Athelstan, nearly a thousand years ago. It is worth noticing that most of these ancient laws are penal in their character rather than charitable, being aimed at the evils of idleness and vagrancy, and therefore particularly numerous, when, from any great social change, like the emancipation of the serfs in the time of Richard II., or the breaking up of the monasteries under Henry VIII., the tendency to vagrancy had grown stronger. Thus, the insurrection of Wat Tyler in 1381 (which was a servile war, and, like most servile wars, was occasioned by a partial emancipation of the serfs), was followed in 1388 by that off-cited statute, 12 Richard II., which is sometimes called the origin of the poor laws of England and America. Again, the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536-9 was both preceded and followed by cruel statutes against vagrancy. The statute 22 Henry VIII., cap. 12, in 1531, punished vagabonds with the lash, till they were "bloody by reason of such whipping"; and the still more cruel statute. Edward VI., cap. 3, punished them by branding and by selling into slavery. But these laws were found too extreme, and therefore ineffectual to repress beggary, and they were followed, even during Edward's brief reign, by a more humane law, which provided for the choice of collectors of alms in every parish, whose business it should be on Sundays to "gently ask and demand of every man and woman what they of their charity will give weekly toward the relief of the poor," and to "justly gather and truly distribute the same charitable alms weekly to the said poor and impotent persons." We should prefer to consider this merciful statute, rather than the barbarous enactments of an earlier day, as the origin of our American poor laws. It was continued by special acts in the reigns of Mary, of Philip and Mary, and of Elizabeth. The latter, in the fifth year of her reign (1562), decreed a compulsory tax, "if any person of his froward or willful mind shall obstinately refuse to give weekly to the relief of the poor according to his ability." After a course of gentle exhortations by the parson, the church-wardens, the bishop and the trial justices of his neighborhood, the affair ended in a commitment to jail, if "the said obstinate person" should resist all these blandishments. This is the first instance of a compulsory poor rate; and it was followed, ten years later, by an act authorizing justices, among other things, to appoint overseers of the poor, "and if a person so appointed shall refuse to act, he shall forfeit ten shillings." This stand-and-deliver kind of benevolence was carried out more completely toward beggars, whose offense was made a felony, and was visited with whippings, diversified with branding, confiscation and hanging. Sir George Nicholls observes, with simplicity, that "the act is framed with great care, and comprises all the chief points of poor-law legislation suited to the period;" adding, that these points are set forth with a clearness "which leaves no room for doubt as to the intentions of the legislature in any case." Certainly; the provisions against vagrancy were likely to carry conviction to the wayfaring man; and a person locked up in jail till he should show mercy to the poor would soon learn how sacredly charity was regarded in England.

—The act of 1601, better known as 43 Elizabeth, is the actual foundation of the English poor laws, and of those in force in the United States. It provides for the employment, either voluntary or compulsory, of poor children and able-bodied adults, and "for the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old and blind, and such other among them being poor and notable to work." To support the expense of this, a tax was laid on every inhabitant and owner in every parish in England. About sixty years after the death of Elizabeth, when the public relief of the poor had been developed into a system, another important law was passed. This was the settlement act of 1662, giving the power of compulsory removal, from any parish, of poor persons not legally settled therein, and in a certain general way defining what constitutes a pauper settlement. On these two pillars—the 43 Elizabeth and the 14 Charles II.—rests the subsequent legislation on these subjects in England and the United States. But so materially has the course of legislation been modified in America by the great difference existing between our circumstances and those of the mother country, that it is impossible to draw a close parallel between our poor laws and those of England, either in their aim, their details or their results. These laws in England were made necessary by the presence of a great and persistent class of poor persons, many of whom were also vicious characters, needing all the restraints of the law. Hence the severity of the early statutes against vagrants, laws which were at first the germ of the whole poor law system, and have made no inconsiderable part of it. But in America no such pauper class existed at the outset, and our arrangements
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for relieving the poor have been such as to prevent the creation of such a class. It was, in fact, to make room for the poor cottagers of England, as well as to seek freedom for their religion, that John Winthrop and his followers colonized New England. In a paper written before he set sail for Boston in 1629, Winthrop said: "This land [of England] grows weary of her inhabitants, so as man, who is the most precious of all creatures, is here more vile and base than the earth we tread upon, and of less price among us than a horse or sheep. Many of our people perish for want of sustenance and employment; many others live miserably, and not to the honour of so bountiful a housekeeper as the Lord of heaven and earth is, through the scarcity of the fruits of the earth. All our towns complain of the burden of poor people, and strive by all means to rid any such as they have, and to keep off such as would come to them. I must tell you that our dear mother finds her family so overcharged as she hath been forced to deny harbor to her own children; witness the statutes against cottages and inmates. And thus it is come to pass that children, servants and neighbors, especially if they be poor, are counted the greatest burthen, which, if things were right, would be the chiefest earthly blessings." To make things "right" in this respect, America was colonized, and for 150 years there was little pauperism in these colonies. But the French war of 1754-63, the revolutionary war, and the disturbed state of Europe from 1788 to 1820, led to a considerable development of pauperism in the new republic of Washington, Adams and Jefferson. Since 1820, though the number of our poor has greatly increased, the proportion of paupers to population has not, on the whole, been greater than it was from 1783 to 1820, if we may trust the meagre statistics available for the earlier period. Of late years there has been much complaint that "the rich were growing richer, and the poor poorer," and, relatively speaking, this is true, as it generally is in civilized communities. But, as compared with the standard of riches and poverty a hundred years ago, in America, and from that time to 1825, the American poor man has been growing generally richer in a remarkable degree. Before 1825, great fortunes were very rare among our people; while the mass of the farmers, mechanics and laborers, north, south, east and west, were pinched and straitened to a degree that would now excite universal discontent, should those good old times return. Whoever has read the biography of Abraham Lincoln, or has learned the habits of life among the country people of Ohio, Pennsylvania or New England, eighty or ninety years ago, will understand what is meant by the common level of poverty among them. Their firewood was cheap, and their liquor was abundant; but their dwellings, their food, their garments, their means of education, travel and amusement, were very inferior to those which the same class of persons now enjoy; and in proportion to the population, pauperism was as common, if not quite so obvious, from 1778 to 1818, or it has ever been since. The researches of Quincy and others in Massachusetts indicate this; and where there has been of late years any relative increase of pauperism, it has been almost wholly in the persons of foreign parentage. That there has been an absolute decrease of native pauperism may be seen by the experience of my own town, which is not unlike that of most country villages in New England. In 1833 Concord, in Massachusetts, had about 2,000 inhabitants, of whom not more than fifty were foreigners. In 1883 it has more than 3,300 free inhabitants (besides 650 prisoners), of whom not less than 900 are either foreign-born or of foreign parentage, chiefly Irish. The number of paupers in Concord was actually greater in 1833 than it is now, when the population has gained 65 per cent.; yet more than half the present pauperism is among that class which has come into the town in the last fifty years; so that the 1,950 native-born inhabitants in 1833 must have furnished twice as many paupers as do the 2,400 native-born in 1883. In fact, two-thirds of the abundant pauperism of Massachusetts, is found among the immigrants of the last thirty years, and their descendants.

—The census tables of 1880 do not show this great excess of paupers of foreign parentage in Massachusetts, nor perhaps in any State; because these tables do not, in fact, give even an approximation to the truth concerning American pauperism. In Massachusetts, for example, the census gives the inmates of almshouses, June 1, 1880, as 4,469, and the out-door paupers as only 954; whereas, by authentic official returns, July 1, 1880, there were not less than 12,000 out-door paupers receiving aid on that day. The average number of the out-door poor in Massachusetts is never less than three times the number in poorhouses; and has sometimes, within the past ten years, risen to be more than five times as many. The census of 1880, therefore, in leaving out of view more than nine-tenths of the out-door poor, in Massachusetts and other States, vitiates its own value for any statistical purpose. Indeed, Mr. Wines says in the preface to his meagre table (Compendium of the Tenth Census, p. 1666), "It is almost, if not quite, impossible to obtain the statistics of pauperism. The in-door poor can be found and counted with comparative ease; but how are we to know when we have succeeded in finding the out-door poor? All that has been attempted in the present census, therefore, has been to give as accurate an account as possible of the almshouse population." And this he states in his table (p. 1675) as 67,067; the whole population of the country being then 50,155,783. If we could assume this proportion of almshouse or workhouse population to the whole people, as the true test of comparative pauperism, then Ireland in 1880, with 5,327,100 inhabitants, and an average of 54,946 in workhouses, would have eight times as much pauperism as the United States; while England, which in 1880, with a population of
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25,323,000, had 180,817 in-door paupers, would have nearly six times as much pauperism as the United States. In fact, no combination of figures, in the present state of human knowledge, can show with much exactness what is the relative prevalence of pauperism in countries differing widely in accumulated wealth, in natural plenty or want, in commercial facilities and in political institutions; but if we are to compare the declared paupers of one country with those of another, or of one American state with another, the best standard is not the relative number of either the in-door or the out-door poor, but rather the proportion which the aggregate of both classes bears to the whole population.

—Now, the state of Massachusetts in 1880, with a population of 1,783,085, or about one-third that of Ireland, had an average of about 25,000 paupers of both classes; while Ireland had about 114,000 paupers of both classes; so that pauperism in Ireland, thus shown, was less than twice as common as in Massachusetts. In England, with a population of 25,323,000 in 1880, there were 808,030 paupers of both classes; so that pauperism in England would seem to be, to that in Ireland, as 46½ is to 31; and, to pauperism in Massachusetts, as 71 is to 31, or more than twice as common. Yet this comparison is found to be unjust; from the fact that the pauperism of England and Ireland is evidently more habitual and permanent than that of Massachusetts. So that the corrected comparison would perhaps make English pauperism six times as frequent and chronic, and Irish pauperism five times as frequent and chronic, as pauperism in Massachusetts is, although the density of population in that New England state is now about 220 to the square mile, while in England it is 436, and in Ireland 163 to the square mile. If a dense population and devotion to manufactures are, by themselves, favorable to pauperism, therefore, Ireland ought to have fewer paupers than Massachusetts, in proportion to her people.

—In truth, the political institutions of a country, the distribution of its land and its movable property, and the inbred spirit of the people, have more to do with the prevalence of pauperism than the growth of manufactures, or the method of administering relief. French pauperism (though by no means so much less than the English plague of that sort, as is commonly thought) is now less constant and pinching than it was before the revolution; because the land of France is more equally divided, and the political institutions are less favorable to caste and privilege than they were. For a like reason Swiss pauperism has never been so enormous as that of France or England; though the general atmosphere of an old civilization, like that of all Europe, is more likely to breed paupers than is the unbreathed air of a new country like the United States.

—If I were to estimate the number of paupers in our whole country, I should not set it at more than 300,000 persons at any one time, and perhaps 1,000,000 different persons during the year, who, in our population of some 55,000,000, are forced to eat the bread of others, as M. Baron says. This would be less than a fiftieth part of our people, while in Ireland the corresponding proportion would be at least a tenth, and in England not much less than a tenth. In France the proportion of the population of 36,000,000 who at some time in the year have received public aid, is perhaps between one-fifteenth and one-twentieth. The mere count of numbers and ratios, however, as I have observed, does not show the true relation, in this respect, between one country and another. A land of high civilization will generally appear to have more paupers than a country like Russia or the states of South America, where the general lack of civilization among the multitude obliterates to a great extent the line between paupers and the respectable poor. It is strictly true that the American pauper who retains his mental faculties, and many of those who do not, are better situated, in almost every respect, than the peasants of Russia, or the semi-barbarous freemen of Mexico, Peru and Brazil. The population of the Tewksbury almshouse, which has of late been industriously held up to public pity as unfortunate beyond any community in the civilized world, is, in truth, so far as wasting disease, decaying age and mental disease will permit, more comfortable than two-thirds of the self-supporting inhabitants of Ireland, and in a better material condition than a large part of the colored, or even the white, people of our southern states. And it must not be forgotten that for a great proportion of our American paupers—who are, more than in most countries, the persons wholly incapacitated, from age and bodily or mental infirmity—the same causes that have made them dependent have deadened their susceptibility to the degradation which pauperism imposes on its victims. "To eat the bread of another or to die," is not a sentence deeply felt by the congenital idiot, the demented lunatic, or the incurable invalid, who compose so large a quota of the inmates of American poorhouses. This is a fact often lost sight of by writers on the subject, who have not much practical acquaintance with the poor.

—The real stress of pauperism is in the burdens and penalties it lays on whole classes of industrious people, not so much by the tax which public relief imposes, as by the disqualification and moral discouragement it makes inevitable. "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." M. Baron shows in a striking manner, by an ingenious calculation, how unavoidably myriads of the French artisans and laborers must leave their families, or see themselves each year in the slough of pauperism. He says, with an eloquence that rises less from the language than from the pathetic fact signalized, "Sickness, casualty, old age and death are to us but phrases; but the proletary is stung to the heart by fear of them; if he escapes some, he can not avoid the others; and each one of them strikes for him incessantly the fatal hour of pauperism. Death, in particular, leaves behind
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it numberless deprivations, of which a simple computation will give us a glimpse. France had in 1876, 36,905,788 people; the number of the married of both sexes being 15,156,170. It is below the truth to estimate half this number as owners, occupants, employers of labor, or persons engaged in trade or the liberal professions; leaving in the second half, operatives, day laborers, artisans, small employers, and domestics, who certainly in the aggregate number more than the first half. This last enumeration, then, contains at least 7,500,000 married people. The general mortality of France ranges from 23.40 in a thousand to 23.16; but for married people it is fair to take the lower average mortality computed by the friendly societies, 15.20. Consequently, each year removes from this aggregate of 7,500,000 not less than 114,000 fathers or mothers. Let us reckon up, then, all the miseries that in a single year accumulate in these poor households, and see whether it is not strictly true to say, with the English economists, 'Death is the mother of pauperism' (mors miseriœ mater)."

—Nevertheless, as M. Baron points out, these inevitable causes of pauperism, sickness, accidents, old age and death, may be alleviated in some measure by life insurance, by deposits in savings banks, by membership in friendly societies, and by other methods of providing for the future, which are so common in America, and as yet so rare among the workingmen of Europe. He devotes half his book to a consideration of these economic safeguards against pauperism; and it is in this direction, also, that the governments of Europe, as well as philanthropic individuals, are moving at present. The renowned statesman of Prussia, Prince Bismarck, having raised his country into an empire, and secured the military preponderance of Germany in Europe by his favorite prescription of "blood and iron," long continued, is now seeking to guard the poor subjects of the German empire from pauperism by a series of compulsory and co-operative economies, for which his administrative subordinates are framing laws. These governmental measures for making the German workingman frugal and sober under legal penalty, and for compelling capital to take its share in accumulating insurance funds against pauperism, are not, as I write, fully matured; but we shall soon see what shape they will take, and how effective they are likely to be. The English, who do nothing of this sort by legal compulsion, except the exaction and administration of the poor rates, but whose aim is to encourage saving among the poor, are doing much in that direction, by their postoffice savings banks, and by the stimulation of all sorts of mutual aid societies and other forms of co-operation. A Hampshire clergyman, Rev. W. L. Blackley, has recently published a paper in the "Nineteenth Century," wherein he proposes that a large proportion of the poor rates and of pauperism be avoided by a legal obligation that every youth shall, from eighteen to twenty-one, or thereabouts, pay to the government (say through the postoffice savings bank department) the sum of £15 once for all, or 2s. per week for three years, and then be poor rate free for life. This would, on the average, fully suffice to allow a repayment, in the form of 8s. per week during sickness, at any period, and a pension of 4s. per week during the remainder of life after attaining the age of seventy, according to the calculations of Mr. Blackley; who shows that, under the present system of poor rates, the law actually compels the provident and industrious to pay a great deal more than £15 each, in a lifetime, for the lazy and the vicious. In order to prevent imposture and false claims of sickness, he would have applications for repayment, under his plan, left in each case to a local jury of persons interested in preventing imposture; as, for instance, either to a specially appointed committee of rate payers, or to the existing boards of guardians, with the aid of local medical men, who now administer the legal relief under the poor laws. There is practical good sense in these suggestions.

—Of the two modes of public aid which the English designate as in-door and out-door relief, the latter is every-where and always the more common; for there never can be almshouses, workhouses, hospitals, etc., enough to receive all the poor at any season, or half of them in seasons of special destitution. M. Baron, contrary to most English and some American authorities, favors out-door relief, or what the French more properly call "aid to the family," securs à domicile, rather than the strict application of the "workhouse test," or the multiplication of hospitals and infirmaries. I have long held the same opinion, and for the same reasons, mainly, which this French writer now advances. Out-door relief is often abused, and these abuses are most to be guarded against in democratic countries; but it is when well administered, as it easily may be, not only more humane and effective, but less costly, than in-door relief, which involves the building and keeping up of great establishments. Both methods are indispensable, and each serves to correct the abuses of the other.

—The cost of pauperism to the public treasury varies greatly in different countries. In Great Britain and Ireland the annual cost of the public poor is nearly $50,000,000 for 35,000,000 of people—say $1.50 per capita for the whole population. In France the cost does not exceed $1 per capita, and in Germany is even less. In New England and New York the annual cost is nearly $1 per capita; in the more southern and western states it ranges from seventy-five cents down to twenty-five cents, or even less, per capita. I should estimate the average per capita cost for the United States at fifty cents or less, that is, from $20,000,000 to $25,000,000 in a year for the whole country. Even in European nations this cost is not a great burden when compared with the yearly army and navy estimates; and it can hardly be said that, in America, the pecuniary burden of pauperism is seriously felt. Its social and moral evils are grievous, however; and richly will he
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deserve of mankind who shall show us how to check them.

F. B. SANBORN.

PEACE.

PEACE. Says de Maistre: "History unfortunately proves that war is, in a certain sense, the habitual state of mankind: that is, that human blood must be shed, here or there, without interruption on the earth; and that a state of peace is, for each nation, but a respite." Is this true? When God created the world, did he hand it over, forever, to the destroying angel? Is there no means to preserve peace among the nations? A means to prevent war, generally, would be to sanction, as an inviolable principle of public law, that each state is independent and free, and that no state has a right forcibly to meddle with the constitution or government of another state. A state is a society of men which alone can rule and dispose of itself; to meddle with its affairs, whatever they be, is to render uncertain the autonomy of all states; it means to scatter the seeds of war, which sooner or later will germinate and bear the most bitter fruit. It will be remembered, that on Aug. 10, 1791, Mirabeau being then president of the constitutional assembly, some Quakers appeared before the bar of that body and asked to be permitted to live under the protection of the laws of France, but reserving in their own favor the condition, that they should never be compelled to go to war. With admirable good sense, Mirabeau answered them, amid applause: "* * If I ever meet a Quaker I shall say to him: 'My brother, if thou hast the right to be free, thou hast the right to prevent thy being made a slave. Thou wantest peace? Well, it is weakness which invites war: a general resistance would be universal peace.'" A general resistance of all states against any intermeddling in the affairs of others would be one of the greatest guarantees of peace in the world. Thus, in some way a federation of free states would be formed, of states which desired to remain free, and which proclaimed as an unalterable rule of international law the principle of non-intervention.

—The reciprocal independence of the nations thus proclaimed and assured, we would see the burden of standing armies, which lead to that terrible, inexorable tax, the tax of blood, but nevertheless the most indispensable of all taxes, disappear. This tax does not take from the contributor simply part of his income, or his entire income, a part of his capital, or even his whole capital, but it takes liberty and life from him; it has become the indispensable condition of political societies. The liberties of nations could not but gain by the abolition of standing armies; for history teaches us, that standing armies are an eternal danger to the liberties of nations. "Regular troops (miles perpetuus)," says Kant, "being always ready to act, incessantly menace other states, and incite them to increase their number of armed men ad infinitum. Such rivalry, an inexhaustible source of expense, which makes peace more onerous than a short war, sometimes even leads a state into open hostilities with the sole view of getting rid of so painful a burden.' The suppression of standing armies would, therefore, be one of the most powerful means to preserve peace.

—One of the greatest obstacles to the maintenance of peace among nations has been the facilities to feed war which credit procures. It is war that invents those loans by means of which a warlike people finds at a given hour an immense lever, great sums of money, to transform the spades which render the soil of the country fruitful, into instruments which devastate the fields, destroy the cities, and decimate the population. It would be well to admit, as a principle of international law, that the loans effected in a state or abroad, and not destined for the economical wants of the state, should be considered as a menace to the other states, and that it would authorize the latter to form a league against the state which should allow itself to take measures involving an attempt on their security and their independence.

—Without pretending to contradict the principles which Mirabeau caused to triumph in his celebrated discussion on the right to declare war, might we not introduce a guarantee into political constitutions, by making, at least to some extent, the consent of the subjects of a state a condition to a declaration of war? Shall the sovereign have a right to dispose, at his will, of the lives and the savings of several generations, for the sake of quarrels which the people frequently do not understand? The answer is well known which a prince of Bulgaria gave to an emperor of the orient, when the latter proposed to him to settle their differences in single combat: "Would a farrier who had a pair of pincers take the red-hot iron from the furnace with his hands?" We wish means might be found to lay the following questions before the people of a country before a war is undertaken: "Who wants the war? Is it the nation? Is it the government? Does the nation want to see its ports and its workshops closed, its commerce diminished, perhaps even annihilated, its industry ruined, and its wealth pass into the hands of others? Does the nation want that now and forever new taxes and duties be added to the duties and taxes with which the nation is already overburdened? Does the nation want its children taken a way, to make them live a life of fatigue and danger, of sacrifices and resignation, to make them shed their blood in battle? Does the nation want that even those of its other children, who had paid already their tribute to the fatherland, should be taken away once more, on the day after they had again crossed the paternal thresh-old?"21

—May a system of international arbitration
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be relied on as a means to preserve peace among nations? We can not consider that means as effective. With the small nation of the Greeks the amphictyonic council was unable to preserve a state of peace; no modern confederation has escaped civil war; and can we hope that the confederation of the nations of Europe would be more fortunate? We forget that passion is the principal cause of war; and can we think that passion would submit to arbitration? Moreover, if arbitration has no sanction, it does not mean anything; if it have a sanction, that sanction is war.22

—Whatever may be thought of the means to preserve peace which we have just indicated, the fact remains that war exists. We need not examine whether it is just, useful or necessary, as an illustrious philosopher (Cousin) declared it to be. All are agreed that war should be terminated as quickly as possible, and the instrument of peace be signed. That instrument is called a treaty by the law of nations, and from the moment of its conclusion all hostilities should cease. Generally it is the victor who dictates the conditions of the peace; it is also a principle, that in case of difficulties all obscure and ambiguous clauses must be construed against him.

—The power to make peace, which is generally accorded to the heads of states by the constitutions of the latter, does not necessarily carry with it the right to make concessions of territory. Thus, the assembly of Cognac declared that Francis I., although he had the absolute control over peace and war, could not, by the treaty of Madrid, alienate any part of his kingdom.

—The violation of the treaty of peace by one of the parties, is not necessarily accompanied by a resumption of hostilities. According to international usage, official cognizance is taken of the rupture, and all rights are reserved for the future.

—The most celebrated treaties of peace in modern times are the treaty of Westphalia (1648), which put an end to the thirty years war; the treaty of Utrecht (1713), which closed the war of succession in Spain; the treaty of Vienna (1815), which concluded the wars of the empire; the treaty of Paris (1856), which ended the oriental war; and the treaty of Frankfort (1871), which put an end to the France-German war. All these treaties were closed only after terrible wars, which had cost streams of blood and the wealth of the people.

EUGÈNE PAIGNON.

PEACE CONGRESS.

PEACE CONGRESS. (See CONFERENCE, PEACE.)

PENDLETON

PENDLETON, George H., was born at Cincinnati, O., July 25, 1825, was admitted to the bar, was a member of the state senate in 1854-5, and a democratic congressman 1857-65. In 1864 he was the democratic candidate for vice-president, and was defeated. (See DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, VI.; ELECTORAL VOTES, XX.) In 1868 he was strongly, but unsuccessfully, supported in the democratic national convention as a candidate for the presidency. He then became interested in railroads, and abandoned politics for the time. In 1879 he became United States senator from Ohio for six years. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.)

A. J.

PENITENTIARY SYSTEMS.

PENITENTIARY SYSTEMS. (See PRISONS AND PRISON DISCIPLINE.)

PENNSYLVANIA

PENNSYLVANIA, one of the original states of the American Union. The English claim to the territory of which it is composed rested on the same grounds as in the case of New York and New Jersey, discovery by the Cabots and conquest from the Dutch. (See those states, and UNITED STATES, I.) The capture of New Amsterdam was held to carry with it the right to Pennsylvania and Delaware, the latter of which had been originally colonized by Swedes and conquered by the Dutch. (See DELAWARE.)

—William Penn, an English Quaker, possessed a very considerable influence with Charles I., partly because of the services of his father, Admiral Sir William Penn, and still more because of the favor in which he was held by Charles' brother, the Duke of York, afterward James I. This alliance of the Quaker and the Roman Catholic, both dissenters from the church of England, non-jurors, and harassed by penal laws, was not at all uncommon at the time. Penn had been trustee for one of the Quaker proprietors of New Jersey, and thus seems to have conceived the idea of a distinct Quaker colony in North America. March 4, 1681, he obtained from the king a patent for "all that tract or parte of land in America," bounded on the east by the Delaware river, from "twelve miles distance northwards of New Castle towne," and, if the Delaware river should not reach latitude 43° north, then by a due north line from the head of the river to the northern boundary; on the north by latitude 43° north; on the west by a north and south line five degrees west of "the said eastern bounde"; and on the south by latitude 40° north, to its intersection with a circle of twelve miles radius drawn around New Castle. The province was to be called Pennsylvania; and the payment therefor was to be two beaver skins annually.

—As laid down in the charter, the northern boundary would have run across the middle of the present state of New York, and the southern boundary would have lain north of the capital city, Philadelphia. Necessity produced the ingenious idea that "to the beginning" of any degree of latitude was only to the end of the next preceding degree; and Penn and his descendants, accepting latitude 42° as the northern boundary, claimed latitude 89° as the southern boundary, thus taking in the two noble bays of Chesapeake and
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Delaware. Lord Baltimore struggled to restrict Penn to latitude 40°, and the dispute was not finally compromised until 1762, when the Penns, by giving up part of their southern claims, succeeded in securing their capital and a free access to Delaware bay. In 1780 the western boundary, five degrees west of the eastern, was run by commissioners from Pennsylvania and Virginia. By resolution of Sept. 4, 1788, the congress of the confederation relinquished to Pennsylvania the jurisdiction over the triangular strip of land in the northwest, north of latitude 42°, and west of New York, which gives the state access to Lake Erie; and Jan. 3, 1792, the new congress authorized the president to issue letters patent, conveying the territory named, to Pennsylvania. (See also WYOMING).

—Penn having acquired the three counties on the Delaware from the duke of York (see DELAWARE), these were kept in close relation to Pennsylvania until the outbreak of the revolution, when Delaware became a distinct state. Penn gave his new province four various schemes of government, in 1681, 1682, 1683, and 1696; and Oct. 28, 1701, he gave it the final charter of privileges, under which it lived until 1776. Under this the governor was appointed by the proprietor; the assembly, of one house, was to be chosen annually by the people; and sheriffs and coroners were to be appointed by the governor out of a double number of candidates selected by popular vote. In spite of many conflicts between governor and assembly, the charter, on the whole, worked well during its existence. One of its evil features was the reservation of quit-rents to the proprietors on land sold; and these were abolished in 1779, the assembly voting £130,000 to the proprietors in compensation for them.

—CONSTITUTIONS. June 14, 1776, the last charter assembly adjourned until Aug. 26. In the meantime a state convention at Philadelphia, July 15 - Sept. 28, called by the revolutionary committees, framed a state constitution, which went into force without a popular vote. It provided for an assembly of one house, chosen annually by the freemen over twenty-one who were tax payers; for a council of twelve persons; for a president [governor] chosen annually by joint ballot of the council and assembly; and for a "council of censors," of two from each city and county, to be chosen by popular vote every seventh year, and to inquire into the conduct of state officers and into violations of the constitution.

—A new constitution was framed by a convention at Philadelphia, Nov. 24, 1789 - Feb. 26, 1790, Aug. 9 - Sept. 2, 1790, and approved by popular vote. It divided the assembly into a senate chosen for four years by counties, according to tax-paying inhabitants, not less than fifteen nor more than thirty-four in number, and a house of representatives chosen annually in the same manner as the senate, not less than sixty nor more than 100 in number; it provided for a governor, to be chosen by popular vote and to serve three years; it made judges removable by the governor on the address of two-thirds of each house: and it abolished the council of censors.

—A third constitution was framed by a convention at Harrisburgh and Philadelphia, May 2, 1837 - Feb. 22, 1838, and was ratified by a close vote, 113,971 to 112,759. It changed the term of senators to three years, and that of the judiciary from good behavior to fifteen years for the supreme court, ten years for presiding judges of lower courts, and five years for their associates; it greatly diminished the governor's patronage; and it provided for amendments by their passage in two successive legislatures and their ratification by popular vote. In 1850 the judiciary was thus made elective. In 1857 the number of the house of representatives was fixed at 100, the senate was to be chosen by districts, and the legislature was forbidden to loan the credit of the state. In 1864 the right of suffrage was secured to qualified electors in the volunteer service.

—The present constitution was framed by a convention at Harrisburgh and Philadelphia, Nov. 13, 1872 - Nov. 3, 1873, and was ratified Dec. 16, 1873, by a popular vote of 293,564 to 109,198. It fixes the number of the senate at fifty, to serve four years, and of the house at 200, to serve two years, both to be elected by districts; forbids the legislature to pass special laws on a number of subjects, nor in any case without thirty days' publication; and makes the governor's term of office four years, and that of the supreme court twenty-one years. It is notable that it provides for the trial of contested elections of electors of president and vice-president by the state; in this point Pennsylvania was probably the only state in the Union in 1874 which enforced exactly the simple idea of the electoral system. (See ELECTORS.)

—GOVERNORS. Thomas Wharton, 1777-9; Joseph Reed. 1778-81; Wm. Moore, 1781-2; John Dickinson, 1782-5; Benjamin Franklin, 1785-8; Thos. Mifflin, 1788-99; Thos. McKean, 1799-1808; Simon Snyder, 1808-17; William Findlay, 1817-20; Joseph Heister, 1820-23; John A. Schulze, 1823-9; George Wolf, 1829-35; Joseph Ritner, 1835-8; David R. Porter, 1838-44; Francis R. Shunk, 1844-8; Wm. F. Johnston, 1848-51; Wm. Bigler, 1851-4; James Pollock, 1854-7; Wm. F. Packer, 1857-61; Andrew J. Curtin, 1861-7; John W. Geary, 1867-73; John F. Hartranft, 1873-9; Henry M. Hoyt, 1879-83; Robert E. Pattison, 1883-7;—POLITICAL HISTORY. The citizens of Pennsylvania have, from the beginning of her existence as a state, claimed for her the appellation of the "key-stone state." This significant name is sufficient alone to show that the sections north and south are no recent development, but original political factors, for it was the two sections which Pennsylvania was to clamp together like a key-stone. Popular doggerel of 1790, after specifying the alternate admissions of the new states, Kentucky and Vermont, thus concludes:

"Still Pennsylvania holds the scales,
And neither south nor north prevails."

In time the appellation was sometimes used in a
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little different sense: since the reorganization of parties in 1825, Pennsylvania's electoral votes have never been cast for the unsuccessful presidential candidate; and a vague idea has grown up that Pennsylvania's support or opposition is decisive upon parties as well as sections.

—At first the state was internally divided. Its population was variously Quaker, Episcopalian, Presbyterian (Scotch-Irish), and Lutheran (German); and as the first two classes generally sympathized with Great Britain during the revolution, political and religious feeling were both active. Furthermore, the state was divided by the Alleghanies into a western and an eastern section, whose people had opposite interests and politics, the former being naturally democrats, while the latter were federalists. (See ANTI-FEDERAL PARTY.) At first the eastern section was strong enough to retain the state in the federal party, but the strength of their opponents was gradually increased by the flow of immigration, mostly Irish and anti-British, to the western section, by the united and even forcible opposition of that section to the excise (see WHISKY INSURRECTION), and by the claims of New England federalists to a large tract of land in the eastern section. (See WYOMING.) All these influences were potent enough to give fourteen of the state's fifteen electoral votes to Jefferson in 1796, and thirteen to Burr, and to make the state very doubtful for the future. In 1799 the eastern section was alarmed and reunited by the so-called "Fries insurrection," an armed resistance to a federal law imposing a direct tax on houses. Nevertheless, the democrats, in December, 1799, were for the first time able to elect their candidate for governor, McKean; and he at once removed all Mifflin's federalist appointees to office. In the legislature the house was democratic; and the senate federalist. As the state's electors were to be chosen by the legislature, it was with great difficulty, and only just before the time fixed for the electors to vote, that the senate forced the house to be content with eight democratic electors, leaving the remaining seven to the opposition. The democratic control of the state grew rapidly stronger, and in 1803-4 there were but five federalists in the house, and one in the senate. Indeed, the dominant party almost immediately split into two factions, the moderate democrats, or "constitutionalists," headed by Gov. McKean, and the radicals, or "friends of the people," headed by William Duane and Michael Leib. The latter were principally bent on obtaining a new state constitution, on impeaching and removing the then state judges, and on limiting the tenure of office of the judiciary for the future. In 1805 both factions nominated candidates for governor, McKean and Simon Snyder, and the former was elected by the aid of federalist votes. In 1808, however, the "conventionalists," as the "friends of the people" now called themselves, elected Snyder governor, and secured a long control of the state; but they made no further effort to obtain a new state constitution.

—Immediately after Snyder's accession to office a collision between the state and the United States was threatened in the once celebrated "Olmstead case." This was a prize case, dating from the revolutionary war. The state courts had decided it one way, and the continental congress, and afterward the federal courts, to the contrary. In 1809 the matter was brought to a head by a mandamus from the federal supreme court to the district marshal to execute a writ, and an order from the governor to the state militia to resist it by force. In the end the legislature appropriated a sum of money to pay the claim; the state chief justice decided for the federal court's view; and the militia were sentenced to a trivial punishment, which was remitted by the president.

—Pennsylvania remained overwhelmingly democratic during and after the war of 1812, and her legislature sustained the war vigorously throughout. In 1817 Heister was nominated as an independent democratic candidate for governor against the regular candidate, Findlay, by the Duane party, and was defeated; but in 1820 he was successful. It was not until 1824 that any danger was developed to the democratic control of the state; and that was indirect, the appointment of a board of commissioners for internal improvements, excited by New York's success in the Erie canal. In 1827 annual appropriations for that object began, and continued until 1836. Still more important, in its prospective antagonism to the cardinal principles of the original democratic party, was the vast wealth of the state in anthracite coal and iron. Both had been known before the beginning of the century; but it was not until June, 1839, that the anthracite was successfully applied in Pennsylvania to the manufacture of iron. From that time protection for iron by means of the tariff has been a governing object of all parties in the state.

—At first the revolt against the dominant party showed itself, as in New York, under the name of the anti-masonic party, but with more success than in New York. (See ANTI-MASONRY, I.; NEW YORK.) In 1835 the anti-masons elected Ritner governor, and thus the state, which had been one of the first to pronounce for Jackson, had given him over three-fourths of her popular vote in 1824, and had been steadily democratic ever since, became exceedingly doubtful. The anti-masonic movement came to nothing further than a few attempts at repressive legislation against the free-masons; and the party very soon fell into the whig organization. In 1836 Van Buren electors were chosen by the close vote of 91,475 to 87,111, and the democrats were able to elect Porter governor in 1838 and 1841. In 1840 the electoral votes of the state were for the first time cast for the whig candidates, the election being the closest in its history, as follows: Harrison, 144,021; Van Buren, 143,676; Birney, 343; Harrison's majority, 2 votes out of 288,040. (See also BUCKSHOT WAR.)

—In 1844 the political struggle was still more animated, for the election of the governor fell in the same year with the presidential election. The democratic managers adopted the plan of claiming the semi-protective
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tariff of 1842 as their own. Polk wrote, June 19, 1844, a letter to John K. Kane, of Philadelphia, in which he diplomatically declared that he was not in favor of "a tariff for protection merely"; but that he was in favor of a revenue tariff which should incidentally afford judicious protection; and that he had voted for several specified tariff acts of this nature. Under the rallying cry of "Polk, Dallas, Shunk, and the tariff of 1842," the democrats succeeded in October in electing Shunk by a majority of 4,397 in a total vote of 317,321, and in November they secured the state's electoral vote by a majority of 6,332, and twelve of the twenty-four congressmen. The democratic congress in 1846 changed the tariff of 1842 into a revenue tariff; nevertheless, Shunk's popularity obtained for him a re-election in 1847 by a majority of 17,933. He resigned the next year, and in October, 1848, the whigs elected his successor, Johnston, by the close vote of 168,523 to 168,221. This, again, was a premonition of the result in November, when Taylor electors were chosen by a majority of 3,074 over both Cass and Van Buren.

—As the slavery question rose to national importance after 1848, Pennsylvania was governed at first by the ancient feeling that her function was that of a balance wheel between the two sections. As democratic success seemed most likely to maintain national harmony, Pennsylvania was democratic until 1860 in her elections for governor, presidential electors and legislatures, with the exceptions of 1854, when the anti-Nebraska excitement carried into office Gov. Pollock and a majority of the lower house of the legislature, and 1858, when the republicans obtained a majority in the lower house. In 1860 a governor was to be elected, and the success of the republicans in electing Curtin by the unusual majority, for Pennsylvania, of 32,164 over Henry D. Foster, who was heartily supported by a fusion of all the other three parties, seemed almost decisive of the presidential election in November. The majority of the Lincoln electors over the fusion electors was increased to 59,618 in a total vote of 476,442. Both houses of the legislature were republican, and twenty-one of the twenty-five congressmen.

—Since the accession of the republican party to power, Pennsylvania has remained a steadily republican state. In congressional elections the democrats have usually obtained a fair share, and occasionally a majority, of the representatives; but in elections for governor or presidential electors, the republicans have invariably been successful. In 1878, for governor, Hoyt could only claim a plurality (22,353) over the democratic candidate, owing to 81,758 "greenback" votes for Mason; in other years the majority has been complete. In presidential elections the republican majority, though steady, has not been over 30,000, except in 1872, when Grant's majority over Greeley was 135,918 in 563,260 votes. In 1880 the vote for electors stood as follows: Garfield, 444,704; Hancock, 407,428; Weaver, 20,668; scattering, 1,988. In 1882 the legislature stands as follows: senate, thirty-two republicans, sixteen democrats, three national; house, one hundred and twenty-one republicans, seventy-eight democrats, one national.

—No single man has ever undisputedly controlled a party in the state, with the exception of Simon Cameron. At first a democrat, he was an influential leader in the state, and United States senator 1845-9. With the formation of the republican party in 1855-6 he almost immediately obtained complete control of its machinery. In 1857 he again became United States senator; in 1861 he became secretary of war under Lincoln, but resigned in 1862; and in 1867 he was returned to the senate. In March, 1877, being then seventy-eight years old, and having control of the legislature which was to elect his successor, he resigned, and his son, James Donald Cameron, was elected in his place. The son, however, had little of the suppleness which had often enabled the father to manage even hostile majorities. The party machinery, which in every state is very frequently used to evade the will of the party, was now recklessly or ostentatiously exposed to public view. In 1880 (see NOMINATING CONVENTIONS) the state vote in the republican national convention was thus instructed for Grant, though the majority of the republicans of the state, and almost a majority of the state convention, were against him. In 1881, though defeated finally in the national convention, he still held undisputed control of the state convention which nominated